48 Short Hours
by Feimi
Summary: A horrible accident occurs, causing Zim to have to make a choice. I don't want to spoil the story, but it's rated PG13 for language for now.. and also some slight gorystuff. ZADF
1. Don't mess with things that you don't un

Okay! My next story! I think I'm addicted to writing, truthfully. I want to thank everyone who read and/or reviewed my previous stories. I hope that you like this one. I'm going to do it in chapters, and hopefully it will be sort of long. Thank you in advance for reviewing this one, too. Feel free to let me know of anything you like, hate, or want to suggest for future chapters!   
  
Disclaimer blah blah junk: I don't own Invader Zim, I'm not getting paid for this. You know the deal.   
  
**Chapter 1 - Don't mess with things that you don't understand.**  
  
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He stood there, outside the entrance to the small yard of the odd little green house.. it was early, almost too early. He didn't know what had possessed him to get up at 5 in the morning to attempt to spy on Zim. Yes, it may have caught the little alien off guard, he probably would have never expected a unwanted visitor at such an early hour.. but the loss of precious sleep almost wasn't worth it to Dib. It was the weekend, he should be sleeping in like Gaz did whenever she got the chance.  
  
He yawned silently, closing his eyes and covering his mouth, only to open those amber eyes again and wonder vaguely if Zim actually did sleep. He knew he would probably never find out. He eyed those treacherous lawn defense-gnomes warily. He had wounds that were still healing from the last time he had tried to infiltrate the Invader's base, would he ever learn? He smirked to himself. Probably not.   
  
He stepped forward boldly, the gnomes turned their heads to watch him, but they did not move. No, their master had not commanded them to do anything to the Dib-creature, yet. Hell, he probably didn't even know the Dib was there. The human stood before the door and hesitated as he touched the doorknob. Still no movement from the gnomes. He turned it, but groaned. Zim had actually had the sense to lock it, after all. The boy looked around for another way inside the fortress.  
  
The window had been left open a crack, possibly to let the air in. He pulled it up as slowly as possible and crawled through, into the living room of his arch nemesis. 'He really needs to work on his defenses,' he thought to himself, looking around. All of the lights were on, along with a massive tv set. GIR was sitting on the couch, remote in hand, apparently entertaining himself with the first of the Saturday morning cartoons.   
  
The little robot wasn't even wearing his disguise, and didn't even notice that the human was in the house either.. or maybe he just didn't care. GIR looked away from the tv finally and turned his head toward the boy. He smiled, then opened his mouth to voice a very loud, energetic hello, only to be silenced (at least partially) by Dib stuffing a pillow into his mouth.  
  
"_Shhhhh_," Dib hissed at him. GIR started chewing on the pillow, and feathers started to pour out of it everywhere.  
  
"MMM! Feathers are yummy!" he shouted ecstatically. Dib looked around a little frantically. He was way too loud.   
  
"You.. um.. robot-thing," he said, pulling out his camera and taking a quick picture of GIR. "Could you tell me where Zim is?"  
  
"He is in the potty!" GIR giggled crazily. It was.. sort of true, seeing as how one of the entrances to the elevator was in Zim's Kitchen-toilet. Dib looked into the kitchen, staring at the toilet in the middle of it. He would have made it a point to tell Zim that people normally didn't have a commode in the middle of their kitchens, but why let him in on anything that might just barely help him in his mission anyway?  
  
"He is _in_ the toilet?" Dib asked, arching an eyebrow.  
  
"Why **YES** he _is_! He's probably workin' on something to doom you all! I'm gonna sing the doom song again! Doom doom doomy doom..." And so it started.. and kept going and going.. and going.. Convinced that he wasn't going to get any other useful information from the little robot, Dib looked around for another way down to Zim's labs.. besides the toilet of course. Suddenly, he remembered something.  
  
"Computer?" he asked hesitantly, staring at one of the walls, then the ceiling.  
  
"Unauthorized user," the computer stated simply. "Please state your name and species."  
  
"Dib," he blinked at it. "Filthy human wormbaby?"   
  
"I'm glad you admit it," the computer said without any emotion in it's voice. Dib stared around at the house for a while. "Well?" The computer asked him, sounding now as if it were growing impatient.  
  
"I need to get down to the lab.. but preferably some room that Zim is not in," he started, doubting that the computer would do anything for him at all. It was worth a try, though.   
  
"Zim is monitoring every inch of the lab, currently.. however, he is not on the storage level." A hatch opened in the wall, revealing another elevator, waiting to take him where he needed to go.   
  
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The Irken Invader watched the monitor screens, running a plan through his ingenious mind over and over again. He switched the monitor view momentarily to the upper floor, shaking his head as he could hear that GIR had started singing the doom song again. What was he going to do with him? For such advanced technology, GIR really did seem very stupid. He didn't flip to the storage level just yet, the upstairs window was open. "Curse you, GIR!" he bellowed and took the toilet-elevator back upstairs,abandoning his latest plan for world domination in order to secure his home.   
  
"GIR!" he shouted. GIR ran over to him and saluted promptly, his eyes glowing red.  
  
"Yes, my lord?!"  
  
"You left the window open again," Zim snarled, giving GIR a glare. GIR's eyes turned blue again, staring over at the window.  
  
"I didn't open it that wide, master. It was only open a little. That Dib-human pushed it open and crawled inside. I think he was lookin' for you, cause he asked me where you was, and I told him that you were in the _potty_!" The robot started giggling again.  
  
"Y-You WHAT?!" Zim looked around the room, searching for signs of his most hated enemy.. but he was gone. "GIR! Why didn't you tell me sooner?! Do you realize what this means?!" GIR smiled at him. "Of course you don't.. don't even _bother_ to say yes," the Irken grumbled loudly. "It means he's somewhere in the house, taking pictures with that foul 'camera' of his," he made quotation marks with his fingers as he said the word, "and then he'll give them to those.. paranormal.. people-things and our mission will be a failure."  
  
"Yay!" The little robot cheered.  
  
Zim was thoroughly irritated.. he made a quick mental note to program the gnomes to never _ever_ allow the Dib anywhere near the yard, with or without his orders. "COMPUTER?!" He then shouted at the ceiling. "Where is the Dib-stink?!"  
  
"Dib is on the storage level, in Room 07," the computer stated flatly. Zim tried to remember what was in Room 07, but his memory failed him at the moment. Whatever it was, though.. it was definitely something he didn't want the human to get his hands on.   
  
"Computer," he said calmly. "Take me to the storage level."  
  
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The storage level was dark. Well, at least the hallway was. Dib walked as quietly as possible, pausing now and then to listen for the faintest sound that may have been Zim. He peered into different rooms, taking snapshots and smiling to himself about how nice they would look on a new episode of Mysterious Mysteries. As he peered down the hall, a room farther down was aglow with an eerie blue-green light. It cast a certain spookiness about the place, making Dib's hair stand on end.  
  
Curiosity definitely got the better of him and he skipped the other rooms to go straight to that particular one. He peered through the doorway to Room 07, then walked slowly inside. There were several tubes running through the room that contained a glowing, blueish liquid that was clouded with green. They were containers, each with an identical label. Dib tried to read the label as he snapped a few more pictures, but it was written in Irken, so it was no good for him to even try.   
  
He touched one of the tubes. The liquid felt cool against his hand as it moved under the glass-like substance, almost freezing. The warmth from his hand warmed the liquid in the tube quickly, the fast response to his temperature was puzzling. He wondered if he would ever get the chance to ask Zim what it was. 'Yeah right,' he thought with a snort of a laugh. 'If you don't get killed for being here, you'll be lucky enough.'  
  
He pulled his pale hand away, then noticed that a crack was forming in the side of the tube. "Shit," he whispered, starting to back away from it. The crack lengthened, then the tube burst completely, broken glass flying everywhere, along with the liquid contents. The boy held his arms up to shield his face, but it was almost in vain. He was starting to bleed, his hands and his face cut by the glass, and he was dripping from head to toe in whatever that stuff was. It felt as cool as before... but then it started to warm, and to his horror it was seeping into his skin.   
  
He let out a weak-sounding sort of scream, trying to fling it off of him but to no avail. His knees were buckling beneath him, his legs felt like gelatin, and pain seared through his body, starting to consume this thoughts and cloud his mind. "Wh-What's happening?!" He managed to choke out. He heard a distant sound of metal clanking on metal, getting louder and louder, then a pair of bright crimson eyes appeared somewhere above him.  
  
"What have you done, Dib-human?" Zim gasped loudly. He was up on his spider-legs, staring down at him with a look of utmost horror on his face. 


	2. Plasmatic Toxicity

Okay! It's the 2nd Chapter! I want to thank everyone for their reviews! I could just hug you all. I never imagined I would get that many after just one day! I think that this story is pretty much just drama right now.. I don't think it fits into any other category, really. Oh, and I changed my settings so that I can get anonymous reviews. Sorry about that, I didn't know it was on.  
  
**Chapter 2 - Plasmatic Toxicity**  
  
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Dib's vision was darkening. He stared up at the Irken Invader, letting out a soft moan of pain as he tried to focus. Zim looked afraid, then confused, then finally.. angry. He lowered himself and pulled Dib to his feet. The human trembled as his knees started to buckle under him again. He felt weak, he didn't want to move.   
  
"Zim," he started slowly, grabbing one of Zim's arms for support as he started to sink to the floor again. The alien recoiled slightly at his touch, but dragged him out of the mess and into the hallway.  
  
"What in the name of the _Cosmic Fish_ did you think you were doing, you foolish Earth-boy?!" He barked the question at the human as he propped him up against the wall. Dib could see his reflection in those bulbous red eyes. He tried, but couldn't manage to answer. Zim reached behind himself to pull a piece of cloth out of his PAK. He glared at the Dib-creature with utmost loathing as he started to whipe away the remainder of the liquid that was on Dib's clothes.   
  
"I.. it w-wasn't my fault," Dib said weakly, his body shaking.  
  
"Dib," the alien said calmly, "there is a very good reason that I do not allow anyone inside my base uninvited." He was burning with anger, despite his calm appearance. A microphone came out of his PAK to settle in front of his face. "GIR!" He shouted into it. "Get down to the storage level!" The human sank towards the floor again. "What _is_ the matter with you, human?" Zim asked, both irritated and concerned as he pulled him up again. Within a few moments, GIR dropped from the ceiling, saluting him again since duty mode had been activated.  
  
"Yes, my master?!" His red eyes glowed in the dark hallway. Zim flipped on a nearby light switch.   
  
"GIR, I need you to go to storage Room 01 and bring me my cleaning things. Dib-beast has made a mess in the Plasma Containment Room," he ordered as he cast a quick glare in Dib's direction. GIR's eyes turned normal and blue again.  
  
"OOOOOH.. you is in _trouble_!" The insane robot giggled as he pointed at Dib, then trotted off to follow his master's orders. Zim shook his head as he watched him go. He looked back over at the light switch and pressed a button underneath it, which caused a panel like a keyboard to decend from the ceiling. So many good pictures Dib could have taken.. but he couldn't reach for his camera since his arms felt like noodles. Zim typed away quickly on the keyboard, then what appeared to be a stretcher decended from the ceiling a moment later, hovering inches above the floor.   
  
"I do not know what it wrong with you, _Dib_, but I will have to clean up this mess before we find out." Dib nodded slowly, and Zim pushed him down onto the stretcher so that he wouldn't have to keep propping him up. Zim had calmed down a little, now.. but he couldn't help feeling very annoyed with Dib. Breaking in, making a complete mess, taking pictures, and now acting.. weird. The **_nerve_** of that human filth... part of him just wanted to pummel him with his mighty Irken fists until the boy was nothing but a quivering, crying mass of human slime.. but another part of him was actually starting to worry about the Dib's behavior. His thoughts were interrupted as GIR came running down the hall, making a lot of noise, and dragging a mop, bucket and broom.  
  
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About one hour later the little Irken had finished his task. The floor was mopped and the glass was swept, and now he was grumbling about how Dib had ruined a perfectly good containment device and also wasted some perfectly good plasma. Not that Dib was actually caring to listen, though. He was still in pain and could still barely move, and he felt very uncomfortable now that Zim had found him. It was the vulnerability that was bothering him the most. If Zim decided to kill him, he wouldn't have a chance to fight back.   
  
He could feel the stretcher moving him through the air as Zim marched alongside it. He was still complaining and babbling, but to Dib it all sounded like 'Blah blah blah, blah blah-blah blah.' Sort of like when the teachers were talking about something meaningless while he was at skool. Zim ordered the elevator to take them down to the lab. Dib thought about how much he would have liked to explore and study everything in it, about how much he wanted to expose the little green creature and show the world what he really was. His eyes closed slowly.   
  
He woke up to yet more pain. "Ahh! What the h-" Zim had slapped him in the face.   
  
"Finally!!!" The Irken exclaimed, irritation evident in his tone. "I've been trying to wake you up for the last twenty minutes, filth-beast!" Dib managed to sit up, looking around him. He gasped in horror and made a noise that sounded like a squeak, he was now laying on what truely looked to be an autopsy table inside of a room full of medical supplies and strange, humming machines. Zim smirked and made a tutting noise, as if he was a parent to an incredibly stupid child. "Relax, Dib-human. I am not about to cut you open and examine your _disgusting_ insides as you have threatened to have done to me on several occasions. No, that is not in my plans...today. Maybe next week."  
  
Dib's stomach felt queasy. "Y-you would never get away with it, Zim," he said nervously. Zim sighed and pressed a button and then thick, metallic wires came out of the sides of the table and wrapped around Dib's body, pulling him down and binding him to the table. Dib struggled as best as he could in his severely weakened state, but it only exhausted him more.   
  
"Be still, human.. cease your struggling. I need to figure out what is going on here. Computer, run a scan on the human." He could hear GIR screaming about the scary monkey on tv somewhere up in the house. That damned monkey.. A screen decended in front of Zim as two scanners came up from the sides of the table, running a fluorescent green light over the boy's vulnerable form. The scanners projected an image of Dib in front of the Irken, but Dib managed to turn his head so that he could also see it. He couldn't read most of it, but some of it was actually in English. Zim shuddered in disgust at the human's filthy anatomy.  
  
The holographic screen showed Zim a three-dimensional model of his nemesis, labelling each organ and monitoring his body's water level, heart rate, breath intake, how hungry he was, etc...then a small, flashing, red light appeared at the very bottom of the screen. Zim touched the light and the computer moved to a new screen, dissolving from the first. His crimson eyes widened as he read and looked at a picture of Dib's circulatory system.   
  
"Very interesting..." he said softly, mumbling to himself. A small meter labelled 'Toxins' was showing to be up to thirty percent. "Very interesting, indeed." He stared at the human now, his eyes widening even more.  
  
"Wh-What is it Zim?" Dib panted. Zim saw his heart rate increase as the human started to panic under his gaze.  
  
"This meter is supposed to be at zero when a human is scanned," he stared at Dib intently. "I do believe, Dib, that the Irken Plasma is poisoning you." The meter jumped up to thirty-one percent now. Zim checked the rate of increase, which was about 1.5 percent per hour, give or take a decimal, depending on various..variations. "According to my _incredible_ calculations, I would expect that you have a little less than 48 hours to live."  
  
Dib stared at him in disbelief, but somewhere deep inside he knew that Zim might probably be horrifyingly right. He could feel his body shaking again, he wanted desperately to fight back against the poisons inside of him, he couldn't die like this. Little did Dib know, Zim didn't want him to die like that either. His nemesis couldn't die from some unfortunate accident, he had to die by Zim's hands, if anything! He could derive no pleasure from Dib's death any other way.  
  
"Zim?" The human asked tentatively. Zim was lost in his thoughts again and did not answer. He could find a way to save the Dib, surely. He had an incredible brain.. he could do it.. but if he left Dib to die, he would never have to worry about him getting in the way of his mission ever again. But no! He wanted to kill Dib with some ingenious plan, damn it! He fought with himself, and every so often his conscience would chime in, telling him that deep down he didn't really want to kill the Dib-human at all. Oh, how he pitied him, but how he loathed that Earth-monkey. Zim hated fighting with himself, it made him think that he was crazy.  
  
"Zim?" Dib asked again, louder this time. Zim still ignored him. The Irken's insides were starting to writhe like snakes.  
  
'Surely, if Dib had the chance to kill me,' he thought, his eyes growing wide again. 'He wouldn't hesitate.. he would have me on one of those tables, just as I have him.' His red eyes narrowed maliciously. 'He would be delighted to watch the filth-beasts rip me open and perform their _horrifying_ tests... he would laugh as I die slowly under their knives and needles.' He walked over to the human boy, still fighting with himself over what to do.. it would be so easy to just walk away, to leave the boy there and come back to remove his body after his life had been snuffed out like a candle flame. It would be so easy to find a way to ignore his screams of pain as the plasma derived from Zim's own blood conquered him, destroyed him... So easy.. 


	3. Inner Angels and Demons

Yay! I updated again! I like writing. I might not get to write another chapter tomorrow because I have to go back to my evil hell-job.. curse you, job of evil doom! Thank you all for your wonderful reviews again, they're urging me on. This chapter is a little weird, and a little funny. Zim's inner struggles are... odd. :) Sorry it's a little short... Anyways, on to the third chapter of doom!  
  
**Chapter 3 - Inner Angels and Demons  
**  
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Dib was becoming impatient. Zim's silence was unnerving, he didn't want to even think about what was running through the Irken's mind. He shivered under the cold gaze that the alien gave him as he moved closer. Zim's large eyes were completely focused on the boy, but his brain was somewhere else, it was on Dib, but he wasn't paying attention to the actual Dib, if you know what I mean.  
  
"Zim?" Dib asked again. 'What the hell is wrong with him?'  
  
"To hell with him, just kill him, let him die in evil, _thrilling_ pain," a dark sounding voice hissed into Zim's ear. The alien looked away from the human in confusion.   
  
"Wha?" Zim asked, startled. Dib sighed with relief, thinking that Zim had finally listened to him.   
  
"Why do you have an entire room full of Plasma?" Dib asked softly, staring up at Zim, who was now standing next to the table.  
  
"You heard what I said," the voice that only Zim could hear hissed again. "Leave him there, just march right out of here, go to the movies or something... let him be _doomed_!" Zim jumped slightly, an even more demonic looking version of himself had appeared by his side, smiling down at the Dib. "His pain is beautiful, his weakness feeds my pleasure, his death will complete me. Think of how wonderful, how peaceful it will be when he is gone, Zim," Demonic-Zim purred. Zim gasped softly.   
  
"Hello?!" Dib managed to shout. "Zim, are you listening to me at all?" Zim jumped again, gasping in terror as a more angelic version of himself appeared on his other side. He must be going crazy.. he had never had insane visions like these before.  
  
"Excuse me," Angelic-Zim said, sounding annoyed. "You need to just back your ass on out of here, demon-filth," he pointed at Demon-Zim. Demon-Zim smiled and waved his pitchfork at Mr. Angel-with-an-attitude.  
  
"Not on your afterlife, angel-boy, Zim's brain is _mine_!" He smirked. Angel-Zim's halo brightened.  
  
"**SILENCE**!!!" Real-Zim roared out loud. "My brain is my own!" Dib raised an eyebrow at the Irken.  
  
"Nutcase," he muttered under his breath.   
  
"Now, listen to reason, Zim," Angel-Zim said in the sweetest voice he could muster. "If you walk off and leave him here, he will die.. eventually. He will be gone forever, but would that really please you, to see him die like this?" Zim thought about that for a moment.  
  
"Bah! Of _course_ you want him to be gone forever! That's crazy talk! It would please you very much, and we all know it!" Demon-Zim ranted, his skin starting to turn red and his demon tail tapping like an angry cat's. He pointed his pitchfork at Angel-Zim. "Goody-goody here has been drinking too much rain from those clouds that he sleeps on! It's poisoned his mind! _POISONED_, I tell you!!!" Angel-Zim shook his head at his demonic counterpart, then straightened the feathers on his little wings.  
  
"And you've been drinking too much doom," He sounded annoyed again. Zim wished that they would both just shut up. His brain was hurting and felt like a wasp was making it's nest inside his head. So much noise..   
  
"I am unable to _think_ with all of this madness!!!" Zim shrieked. Dib cringed.  
  
"Sometimes I don't think that you think at all, Zim." The alien's insane screaming was hurting his ears, and freaking the human out, too. Zim continued to ignore his nemesis.  
  
"He's the closest thing to a friend that you have, here or anywhere else," Angel-Zim said softly, pulling off one of his gloves and getting out a nail-file to sharpen one of his claws.  
  
"Oh yesss, a very good form of friend indeed. Don't be _stupid_!" Demon-Zim hissed in argument. "He would kill you if your roles were reversed and you were the one strapped to that filthy table."  
  
"That table is not filthy! It is a superior Irken table and it is better than any table on this filthy dirt-ball planet!" Zim argued, hating the two sides of his personality. Demon-Zim stabbed Angel-Zim right in the ass with his pitchfork, Angel-Zim started running around the room, screaming loudly and trying to pull the burning pitchfork out of his butt. Dib stared at the alien in shock, what the hell was he talking about?  
  
"Zim, you're really freaking me out," He said nervously. Angel-Zim was now strangling Demon-Zim mercilessly, as Demon-Zim gagged and choked and tried to throw him off. Zim shook his head and wondered why even his good side wasn't gentle and sweet... but then again, Zim himself was never gentle and sweet, ever. He sighed loudly as he came to a decision and the two of them vanished.   
  
"I am sorry, Dib-human," Zim started, now free of his distractions. "What is it that you were saying?" Dib stared at him in disbelief, and he had also forgotten his question. Ignoring the fact that the weird, crazy alien had just been talking to himself, and regaining his memory, he asked it again.  
  
"Why do you have an entire room filled with tubes of your Plasma?"  
  
"Isn't it obvious, human?" Zim scoffed at the human boy.  
  
"Well.. no."  
  
"For a medical emergency, duh!!!" Zim shouted. "I am alone here, Dib.. there are no hospitals capable of treating my injuries, I must do it myself. Surely, if I was to have an accident and lose a lot of blood, you would not think that your filthy human blood could sustain my life, do you?" He asked in annoyance.   
  
"Well, when you put it that way, it makes sense."  
  
"Of course it does! I am an amazing genius!" Zim ranted, staring down at the boy.  
  
"What are we going to do, Zim?" Dib asked him quietly, rolling his eyes.  
  
"_We_ are going to do nothing, Dib-monkey, however, _I_ am going to do something," the Irken replied simply. To Dib's horror, Zim walked out of the room, leaving him completely alone.   
  
"Zim! Wait! You can't just leave me here to die!" He yelled after him, struggling against the wires that bound him to the table and achieving nothing at all. He had been afraid that Zim was going to do this.. he was going to die here, and nobody would know what had happened to him. Would anyone even come to look for him? Surely someone would care enough to try to find him.. surely Gaz, or his father.. but would they find him? Zim might preserve him as a type of trophy, or just bury him in some unmarked grave, to be discovered later as nothing but a skeleton by some innocent bystander. He couldn't let that happen.. His body was searing with a sharp pain again, causing him to cry out.   
  
"ZIM!" He choked out, starting to panic again. Silence was his only response. 


	4. Confusion can be Maddening

Okay, yess.. it is the 4th chapter.. I curse my working for not allowing me to stay up late and write insane stories. Parts of this chapter are sort of... gore-infested. It's brief, but horrible.. okay, so not really.. but I figured I would warn you anyway. I decided to change the label of the fic from just drama to drama/comedy, because it does have a little bit of funny stuff every now and then. You're all wonderful, by the way!

**Chapter 4 - Confusion can be Maddening**

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Zim's head was pounding. He could hear Dib all the way on the other side of his underground floor. He felt like he needed.. what did the humans call it? Aspirin.. oh yes, Aspirin. But no, he didn't want to kill himself by finding some and taking it. Who knew what it could do to him? He shuddered at the thought.  
  
He tried to ignore the Dib as he sat at the keyboard of the computer that was right under one of the elevator shafts. He was determined to put the boy out of his mind so that he could actually concentrate. "Human-slug," he muttered. 'Stop calling out for me.. irritating, filthy boy... why am I trying to find a way to save your _pathetic_ and completely _useless_ life again?' His rantings were even loud inside his head. "Ohhh.. I could just _KILL_ you, DIB!!!" He growled, his headache paining him greatly.

Dib bit his lower lip as he stared up at the ceiling in the room. He was still wet, and was feeling cold.. and he didn't want to die. He heard Zim saying something about killing him.. "But you are," he said softly. "Not intentionally, I know, but you are." He was talking to the ceiling, truthfully. His words were not heard by the Irken at all. "It's my own fault," he let out a frustrated sigh. "I shouldn't even be here. I should be at home, watching some stupid cartoons or something and thinking of a way to break into Zim's base.." He stopped and glared up at the ceiling. "That's what got me into this mess in the first place."  
  
"Finally," Zim muttered. The human had grown silent, allowing him to think. He searched his mighty brain for a plan to save the pitiful dirt-child. He started typing away with his gloved fingers on the small keyboard in front of him. As an Invader, he had access to information on each pathetic planet that Planet Irk had conquered, including any medical research that had been found on the inhabitants of the filthy alien planets. He tried to find any information on the properties of Irken blood.. why did it affect the human like venom from a snake? It couldn't be as strong, because if it was, the human would be dead within mere hours.. not a few days.  
  
After a very long, agonizing, twenty-minute search, he found what he was looking for. It was a sort of mixture of a lab report and what seemed to be a history lesson. The Irken text told the Invader that many years before Operation Impending Doom I, there had been a rebellion on the planet that was now known as Conventia, the Convention Hall planet. The planet had been inhabited by a strange, lizard-like creature that had initially been peaceful until the Irkens had arrived to conquer them. Instead of going peacefully, they had become wild, uncivilized.. they fought and raged and so many of the Irkens had died, and so many of the wretched Lizard-people had been slaughtered. The soldiers of the Armada had tried to contain the lizards, to capture them unharmed so they could be made into slaves, but all of the attempts failed.   
  
They would attack and try to kill any Invader that was presented, but they found that they would die quickly, only minutes after exposure to the blood that was inevitably everywhere. 'So the human is stronger than those.. horrible lizard-beasts,' Zim pondered this in silence. 'or at least his immunity to.. me.. is anyway.' He shuddered at a picture of one of the beasts, shown with it's snout buried deep in the entrails of an Irken soldier. "Horror," Zim whispered aloud. The very thought of having his guts eaten while he was still alive made him feel sick. His skin turned a shade paler as he looked on.  
  
The picture then played as a movie, complete with sound. Zim shuddered again, his insides lurching dangerously. He felt like he was going to vomit everywhere. The little Irken on his computer screamed as it was being eaten alive, then the lizard... monster fell over, releasing the dying soldier. The monster twitched and writhed, with foam dripping from it's mouth, then it stopped moving all together and it's dreadful yellow eyes slipped closed. The clip ended, much to poor Zim's relief.   
  
"Dirty, dirty monsters!!!" He yelled at the top of his lungs. Dib just shook his head in the other room. He read further, the text explained that the Irkens had discovered a sort of antivenom that had been created in an effort to preserve the lives of the hostile lizards, but each time they managed to stop the effects of their blood-toxins, they would still have to kill the lizards in an effort to protect whoever was administering the serum. Eventually, all of the lizard-people were exterminated, and the Irkens had to run their own Convention Hall, rather than have a bunch of filthy lizard-slaves to do it. Zim sighed and closed his eyes, thinking.   
  
"How am I going to get that antivenom?" He asked the question aloud, hearing it echo faintly against the metallic walls. An idea formed in his mind as he hopped down from where he had been sitting. "Hmmm.."  
  
--------  
  
"Incoming transmission from... Earth," One of the red-clad Irken soldiers in the control room of the Massive stated. He looked upon his leaders, awaiting their orders.   
  
"Ohh.. don't answer it!" Tallest Red groaned loudly, massaging his temples. He could feel a Zim-induced headache coming on, and he hadn't even seen Zim's face yet.   
  
"Put it through," Tallest Purple said, sighing at his counterpart. He was also not too thrilled to hear from Zim, but he would only keep calling back if they ignored him. Zim's face appeared on the large screen. "Yes, Zim?"   
  
"Greetings my Tallests," Zim saluted gravely. "The mission goes well," he lied. His skin had blanched to a very pale green.. probably both from remembering that Irken being disemboweled and also from actually being worried about the Dib-monster.  
  
"Yes, yes, we're glad to hear that," Red said irritably, his eyes narrowing. "Now what do you want?"  
  
"Sirs," Zim began, "I have a request to make."   
  
"Whatever it is, no," Red glared. Zim's antennae drooped.  
  
"But, but.. my Tallests," Zim whimpered. Surely they could grant him this little request, just this one. Almighty Tallest Purple shook his head at the pitiful little Irken.  
  
"What is your request, Zim?" He inquired, earning another groan of frustration from Red.   
  
"Well, I need to get the formula for-" Zim was interrupted suddenly by the loud shouting of Dib.   
  
"ZIM!!! Get back in here, Zim! I won't let you win, you can't just let me die tied to this table!!!" Dib shouted, it was magnified by the walls deep in Zim's base. Apparently, the human's pain and weakness had subsided for the moment, and he was determined to get the alien's attention. Zim cringed and snarled, looking in the direction of the door.   
  
"Who was that?" Purple asked curiously, placing his long fingers together in front of him and tilting his head to the side.   
  
"Filthy _worm_! SHUT YOUR MOUTH, _EARTH-STINK_!!!" Zim ranted, shaking his mighty fist. He then looked back at his leaders. "Ummm.. that is one of my human-slaves! Yesss.." He smiled a vicious looking smile. The Tallests eyed him doubtfully. "I captured him and he is being disciplined for his.. rudeness," he lied again. Dib would pay for embarassing him in front of his leaders.   
  
"Very good," Purple humored him as Tallest Red shot Purple an angry glare. "As you were saying?"  
  
"I was saying.. yes! I was asking if I could have the formula for the serum that was made for those horrible lizard-beasts that used to live on Conventia," Zim said loudly, regaining his train of thought.   
  
"Release me _NOW_, Zim!" Dib yelled again in the cold room, pushing his body up against the cables that were holding him down. He was determined to get the Irken to come back, to know that he hadn't been abandoned. He also truly loved the sound of irritation in the alien's voice. Zim cringed again, fuming. His _amazing_ patience was running very thin with the human boy.   
  
"Could you hold on a moment?" Zim asked the two tall Irkens politely. Red looked like he was about to say no, but Purple waved dismissively at Zim, who ran offscreen quickly.   
  
"What the heck is he talking about?" Red asked Purple softly. Tallest Purple just shrugged and got himself a donut.   
  
"Don't ask me, you know Zim, usually babbling about some kind of insane nonsense."  
  
--------

"Zim!" Dib called out again, smirking to himself. He didn't care how mad he made the Irken, Zim was his only chance of escaping the cold, evil table at the moment.   
  
"For the love of **me**, what do you _want_?!" Zim was standing in the doorway, looking so irritated that Dib could have sworn that he saw a vein throbbing in the alien's green forehead. He did look much paler than usual, however.. but why?  
  
"I want to be off of this table," Dib glared at his arch enemy. Zim chuckled darkly and shook his head.  
  
"I am afraid that that is out of the question... for the moment," Zim taunted him. "I am doing something _exceedingly_ important and I need as little disruptions as Earthly possible, Dib-monkey. Now, if you would be so kind as to not annoy me further I would greatly appreciate it."  
  
"_Exceedingly_ important?" Dib repeated, becoming annoyed. "So my dying is not important to you?"  
  
"If only you used half of the brain-mass that is contained in your gigantic head.." Zim felt a small twinge of pity for the Earth-creature... and something else.. it was a hurt feeling, though he never would have admitted it.   
  
"My head is not gigantic," Dib protested. "Zim, _eventually_ someone will come looking for me, and when they do find me they'll perform an autopsy and find out exactly how I died.. then they'll know the truth, and do you know who will be on the autopsy table next?" Dib stared right into the Irken's eyes, and those red orbs narrowed in anger at his words.  
  
"There is no reason to threaten me, foolish Dib," Zim said with a tone that was as cold as ice. He leaned down closer to the human's face, his stare unwavering as he spoke. The color had still not yet fully returned to his skin. "Yesss," he hissed, causing Dib to feel very uncomfortable. "I do have a very strong desire to be rid of you forever sometimes, Dib, but now is not the time for such things. Now.. please, cease your endless barrage of irritating screams, and let me finish what I am doing. I will release you from here in due time." Dib was shocked that Zim had asked him nicely to leave him alone, and he was confused again. Before he could ask more questions or make any accusations, Zim was gone from the room again, racing back to his Tallests as fast as his spider-legs could carry him. He couldn't keep them waiting... 


	5. Flight to the Krazy Taco

Whee! It's Chapter 5! I wrote this at work.. all day long! It was really slow, and I work in a callcenter so I get to sit here and do whatever I want as long as there are no phones to answer. Yeah.. pretty neat, until people irritate you to the point where you wish that Zim would just blow up the world already. Anyways, this chapter is weird too, but I hope that you all like it. Thank you for your amazing reviews, as always! ummmm.. also, in response to Goopy Goo's review, I was actually thinking about doing that. Dib's condition is gradually going to get worse.. his 48 hours isn't even half over yet! :) How evil of me, to torment poor Dib.. The chapter title is actually a parody of a chapter in Lord of the Rings, by the way.. Flight to the Ford. heh heh heh.  
  
**Chapter 5 - Flight to the Krazy Taco**  
  
--------  
  
Dib tried calling after him again, but Zim had sealed the door to the room where he was reporting to his Tallests, blocking out all of the noises in his base. He was angry.. foolish Dib-human.. how dare he?   
  
"I'm sorry for making you wait, my Tallests," Zim said apologetically.   
  
"Yeah, whatever," said Red, still irritated at Zim. "Now, about your request.. you said you needed something having to do with the lizard-beasts that are now extinct?"  
  
"Yes," Zim stated simply. "The antidote that was concocted in an effort to make them into filthy, scaly, smelly slaves!" Purple smiled fondly, he remembered those battles, he had even taken part in one of them. The horror, the gore, the thrill of hunting and being hunted.. the blood everywhere. The blood? He faintly remembered something about the blood. He was pulled out of his memories by Red, who elbowed him in the side.  
  
"Do you know anything about this.. antidote he's talking about?" Red stared at Purple, who looked clueless for a moment, then..  
  
"I remember," he said. "Zim, nobody has needed that since those monsters were all killed off, it's going to be difficult for us to even find someone with records on how to make it. Why do you need this?"   
  
"Ummmm.." Zim was frantically trying to think, and his color was gradually returning to his skin.. "Sirs! It is vital to my enslavement of the filthy humans! If I cannot get it, my mission will be a failure! A complete and utter _failure_..." Both of his leaders were looking at him skeptically.  
  
"Give us a few hours, Zim.. we'll try and find it for you," Purple said. One of his eyes was twitching.   
  
"Yes, my Tallests!" Zim saluted as they ended the transmission.  
  
"Speak for yourself," Red glared at his purple-wearing co-ruler. "If you think that I'm going to spend one moment of my precious time calling people and doing research for Zim, you're crazy." That being said, he took a large bite out of an Irken candy bar. Purple shook his head and floated over to the window, staring out of it at the stars.   
  
"Please, it's not like we were planning on doing anthing today anyway.. I just want him out of my antennae."  
  
"Are you joking? I have very important things to do!" Red looked over at some passing soldier. "_You_! Get me some curly-fries!"   
  
--------  
  
Dib was staring at the door, now, waiting for Zim to return. It felt like it had been hours, and his clock was ticking. He heard a faint noise in the hallway, like a squeaking sound, but growing louder as it came closer. Something small and green passed by the door, then stopped and came back, staring at him from the doorway.   
  
"Oooh," GIR said, bouncing in in his squeaky little dog-suit.   
  
"Oh, just great.." Dib mumbled.  
  
"Hello, big-headed Dib-human!" GIR giggled and jumped up on the table with him. "What are you doing?"  
  
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Dib asked the robot, irritably.  
  
"The cha-cha!" GIR yelled and danced around the edge of the table, then started hopping up and down on Dib's stomach.  
  
"Uugh! Get off of me!" Dib shouted and would have pushed the insane robot off of him if he had had use of his hands. The robot's jumping on his guts didn't make him feel much better, either. Suddenly, GIR froze like a deer in headlights. Dib looked up at him uncertainly, wondering if he had malfunctioned or something.. but judging by the way that GIR acted, it seemed like he was always malfunctioning. GIR and Zim were perfect for each other.. they were both crazy.  
  
GIR let out a maniacal giggle and jumped off of him, grabbed a nearby remote control, and turned on a large monitor that was mounted on the far wall. Instantly the room was filled with music, and not just any music.. it was the most irritating music Dib had ever heard. To make things worse, the show was about cute, fluffy bunnies in all the colors of the rainbow.   
  
"NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Dib screamed. As if dying wasn't bad enough, and feeling sick wasn't enough torment. He couldn't be subjected to this for the last few hours of his short life. "I need to get out of here.." His mind was blurring again, partially from still feeling weak and sleepy, but also from the incredible amount of stupidity in the room. He stared at GIR, getting an idea. "Hey?"  
  
"Yeees?" GIR turned around to look at him, smiling.   
  
"What's your name?"  
  
"My name is..." GIR paused, as if thinking. He didn't say anything.  
  
"Well?"  
  
"Well what?"  
  
"What is your name?" Dib repeated. He couldn't believe this.. this robot was supposed to be advanced alien technology?  
  
"GIR," he said, then went back to watching tv. Dib blinked and raised an eyebrow. It's name was GIR?  
  
"Um.. GIR, would you release me from this table?"   
  
"I don't know.. Master said that I was not to touch anything that had to do with filthy Earth monkeys..."   
  
'Damn you, Zim,' The boy tried to get GIR's attention again, but failed. He was concentrating too much on the brainless bunny show. Commercials came on.. GIR apparently liked watching those too, he didn't once glance away until..  
  
"TACOOOOOOOS!!!!" He screamed, hurting Dib's ears. The Krazy Taco Man was running around the screen, screaming about how crazy he was. Dib smirked, getting an idea.   
  
"So, you like tacos, GIR?" The human asked him quietly.   
  
"I love the little tacos," Gir sighed blissfully. "I love them good.."   
  
"If you let me off of this table, we can go get some tacos," Dib tempted GIR, and GIR stared at the human for a moment, unsure of what to do. Eventually, though, he was seduced into helping Dib's plans for escape. He jumped up to the console and pressed a small blue button. Immediately the cables unwrapped themselves from Dib's body, allowing him to climb down from the table.   
  
His legs trembled for a moment, threatening to turn into jelly once again, but he steadied himself by grabbing the side of the table. "Thank you, GIR," he smiled down at the little robot. 'Finally, I can escape.' GIR smiled again, leading the way out of the room and to the elevator.   
  
--------  
  
Zim paced the room, his insides were still twitching as he thought.. what if his Tallests _did_ manage to find the formula and give it to him? There was no use for it on Irk anymore, so he could understand why it might take them a while to find.. but if they found it, what if it contained chemicals or something that could not be found on Earth? What would he do then? He couldn't just say, 'Sorry, pitiful Earth-monkey, I tried to get you out of the mess you got yourself into, but I can't so I guess I better start digging your grave.' Could he?   
  
"No.. no." He muttered to himself. He would find a way, if this plan didn't work. There had to be some way... Why did he care so much? Why?   
  
'Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer,' a voice in his head said.  
  
"Invaders feel nothing and need no one!!!" He shouted. "No love, no hate.. wait.. yes, I do feel hate.. Damn you! No filthy friendship. I don't give a flying rat's behind about this stupid planet, or that stupid big-headed freak boy!" He was glowering at the wall as he ranted. He ranted so loudly and was so lost in himself that he didn't even hear GIR's war cry of 'TAAAAACOOOOOOOS!!!!!' as he took off with Dib on his back as they reached the upper level, and sped out into the sunlight.   
  
'Please,' part of him laughed at himself. 'Don't you get it yet? You are _weak_ for not just putting out of his coming misery.'  
  
'Bah. Don't listen to him.. You're weak for not admitting that he's actually not as bad as you try to think he is.' Angel-Zim and Demon-Zim were quarrelling inside his head again.. no wonder his head hurt. They were getting pretty irritating. "_SILENCE_!" He ordered them.  
  
"Fine, but you know that this is the way it's supposed to be. You're like.. a roadrunner and a coyote, the two of you, like those inane cartoons that GIR always watches. You always think of some insane plot to destroy him or the world, and he always finds a way to stop your plans. Face it, Zim.. you are just like the coyote, dumb like the coyote." Angel-Zim was standing next to him again, with a smirk on his face.  
  
"My plans are not dumb like a coyote's!" he ranted.  
  
"Yeah, sure..whatever.. now go back to your worrying," his good side said as he receded back into Zim's brain.  
  
He wanted to erase every thought about stupid Dib from his mighty Irken brain, but he figured that he might as well check on the crazy Earth-boy. He pressed a button on the door panel and it opened with a loud hiss. Marching, he moved down the hallway to the room that presumably held the Dib.   
  
"Allright, Dib-creature. I suppose that I can release you for a moment." He checked his watch as he walked through the door. A few hours.. he hoped the Tallests wouldn't take long. Dib's clock was ticking. "Dib?" Looking up from his watch, he saw that the human was gone, and happy rabbits were hopping all over his tv. His eyes widened, then narrowed dangerously as he picked up the remote control and turned off the monitor. "_**GIR!!!**_"  
  
--------

"TAAAAACOOOOS!!!" GIR screamed at the top of his lungs as he flew down the busy streets towards his favorite eating place of all time.   
  
"AAAAAAHHHH!!!" Dib held on for dear life, or at least what was left of his as the little robot/green dog flew through the crouds of people, and the traffic. They almost hit two semi-trucks, a poodle, and a little kid with a new jumprope. By the time they had reached the Krazy Taco, Dib felt like his intestines had flipped over and his skin had turned an even more sickly shade of pale.   
  
"Taco taco taco," GIR purred happily. That nice Dib human was going to get him his wonderful tacos. He felt like dancing, and he did as Dib tried to recover and not vomit into the bushes. Dib wobbled into the restaurant, picking leaves out of his pointy hair. GIR hopped and skipped and jumped most joyously by his side. Dib only regretted that he had dropped his camera in the bushes as they were leaving Zim's house.   
  
"Damn," He muttered as he stood in the line to get GIR the tacos that he promised. "This is the worst weekend I've ever and will ever have." He paid the taco man, then handed a large tray of slimy, greasy tacos to Zim's insane robot henchman.   
  
"Tacos.." GIR said again in a hushed voice, as if he had walked into some amazing, sacred, holy place. He held the tray above his head and got himself a table. Dib sighed and walked out of the Krazy Taco, hoping that he could make it home on his gelatin legs.


	6. Never let your enemies know where you li...

Yay! It's chapter 6! Sorry this one took so long.. gah. I've been writing it between calls.. and it's actually a bit longer than the others, which was surprising. I couldn't work on it last night.. my computer was on the fritz due to excessive pop-up ads. Accursed Internet! Well.. I guess it's not so bad, seeing as it allows me to post my insane stories. Gaz is in this chapter! whoo! She's sort of mean, though.. but then again, she pretty much always is, isn't she? Oww.. my bruises hurt! I need soda! I think I drank too much green tea before writing this chapter. I have a soda craving now. Hey! I just realized that I can make those neat lines on my chapters too! How stoopid of me not to notice before!

**Chapter 6 - _Never_ let your enemies know where you live.  
**

* * *

"Computer, locate GIR and the Dib-human," Zim commanded, standing in his living room and now wearing his Earthly disguise.  
  
"The unit, GIR, and Dib Membrane are no longer anywhere on the premises," the computer said in a monotone voice. Zim grumbled and let slip a few profane words.   
  
"Hey, it's not my fault. You never said that they couldn't leave the house." The Irken glared at his ceiling. He had enough to worry about without his own computer system antagonizing him, too. He reached behind himself and pressed a button on his PAK.  
  
"GIR, respond," he hissed, crossing his arms and looking impatient. He waited a few minutes, but heard nothing from the robot. "GIR?" The first thought that ran through his head was that Dib had taken GIR back to his house and was probably taking pictures to send to those.. paranormal humans that he knew.. what were they called? The Swollen Meatballs? He couldn't remember. "Computer, show me GIR's specifications." There was a soft humming sound as the picture of the green monkey above his couch slid up towards the ceiling to reveal the large monitor behind it.   
  
The details of GIR's system flashed on the screen.. or at least the parts that Zim had upgraded did, anyway. Zim scanned the screen for information, then smiled triumphantly as he found what he was looking for. "Computer, activate the tracking device implanted in GIR's guidance chip." He pressed a few buttons on his watch and headed out the door. "GIR," he said again when he was outside after he had made sure none of the neighbors were watching him. "Are you there, GIR?" Static... then..  
  
"Hiii!" GIR answered cheerfully, he had apparently finished his Tacos.  
  
"GIR! Finally!" Zim shouted into the microphone. "Do you realize what you've done?! You've let the Dib loose, GIR! He's loose, probably wreaking havoc upon the doomed planet!" The Irken paused.. "Oh.. nevermind.. that's what _I'm_ supposed to be doing!" GIR giggled.  
  
"Duh."  
  
"Anyway.. GIR, get back here! I need you to help me find the Dib-human before he does something stupid, like get those pictures in his camera developed or go the human hospital where he'll send the filthy doctor-beasts to destroy us both!" He ordered in an urgent tone.   
  
"But I _am_ here, Master," GIR said, poking Zim in the back with one of his paws. Zim whirled around, staring wide-eyed at his sidekick.  
  
"Don't _**DO**_ that!"   
  
"Sorry," GIR smiled. Zim looked down at his watch, sure enough, it pinpointed GIR to be exactly where he was. He pressed another button, revealing a countdown.. the countdown to Dib's doom. He gasped softly, it was almost 2:00 pm..   
  
"About 40 hours," he stood there, thinking. "GIR, Do you know where the Dib-human ran off to?"  
  
"He didn't run, Master. I took him to get tacos, and he walked off, then after I was done eating those delicious little tacos I took him home!" GIR shouted excitedly. "He tried to leave without me, but he fell over as soon as he got out the door, so I flew him home and he screamed a lot and then he barfed up his breakfast in his neighbor's flower bed!" Insane giggles were coming from GIR now, as if Dib losing his breakfast had been the funniest thing he had ever seen. Zim looked slightly disturbed, but regained his composure, attaching a leash around GIR's neck. "I didn't see where he went after that, though.. I was chasing a rat!" Zim shuddered as GIR let out a loud burp. "It was yummy!"  
  
"GIR, as much as I would really _love_ to hear about your rat eating tendencies," Zim began, sarcasm evident in his tone, "now is not the time for this. We have to find the human and bring him back here! The mission and his pathetic life depend on it!" He was waving his thin arms in the air, as if that would help show the severity of the situation.  
  
"YAY!" GIR shouted at started running down the street, dragging the distressed Invader behind him.

* * *

'_Curse you, piggies_!' Gaz thought as she grumbled loudly. One day she would destroy them all, every single Vampire Pig that dared to show it's unholy snout. She heard a loud crashing sound, followed by a groan that she recognized as her brother's. Looking up, she glared at him as if to promise that he would die early, but Dib didn't see it because he was too busy pushing himself up off of the floor. He had collapsed as he had come through the doorway, starting to feel woozy again after desecrating his neighbors' yard.   
  
Her Gameslave 2 beeped at her ominously, she dragged her eyes from her brother to the small screen, which now read 'Game Over'. It was unheard of! _Game Over_?!   
  
Suddenly, Dib found that it was much easier to get back up, but only because Gaz had hauled him to his feet by the front of his shirt. A weary gaze met a destructive glare, causing his heart to sink in his chest.   
  
"Congratulations, Dib. You have successfully caused me to have to start all over from the beginning of the level. Are you aware that I will have to destroy you now?" Dib stared at her, but when she raised her small fist to rain misery down upon him he didn't flinch, which shocked her. She gave him a sort of offended look. "What in the nine levels of hell is wrong with you?"  
  
"What do you mean?" He looked puzzled.  
  
"You're supposed to be cowering in fear and whimpering like a baby."  
  
"Oh. Do I normally do that?" Dib had turned away and headed upstairs before he even bothered to wait for her answer. Gaz's cold stare followed after him, and watched him stumble and almost fall down the flight of steps... She went up to his room a few moments later, after he had made it with much difficulty.   
  
"What's going on, Dib?" She asked him as she pushed open his door. He was sitting on his bed, staring down at the floor.   
  
"I'm dying, Gaz," he didn't lift his eyes to look at her. Gaz crossed her arms, looking irritated as usual.   
  
"What happened, did you eat a slice of the mushroom pizza from Bloaty's again? I warned you to always pick the mushrooms off--"  
  
"No.. that's not it. Zim's venomous alien blood is _poisoning_ me, I'm dying." Dib said solemnly. Gaz rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm.  
  
"Whatever. Stop speaking your craziness about your weird friend and get a life or something."   
  
Dib clutched his arm and heard the door slam. Being here didn't feel much better than it did when he was at Zim's, and he still couldn't think of a way to get out of this. Laying down made him feel better, at least he didn't feel like he was going to topple over when he already on his back. He pulled the blankets tightly around his body and shivered, feeling just as cold even in the midst of the warmth that was his bed.   
  
'Probably a fever,' the boy thought as he groaned. This weekend was just getting better and better. In a few minutes, his lack of sleep finally caught up with him. 5:00 am was definitely too early to get up and go spy on Zim's house.. way too early.   
  
"I'll never get up that early ever again," he mumbled before falling into a sound sleep.

* * *

"GIR! Would you _stop_ dragging me?!" Zim gave GIR's leash a hard tug and the little robot flew back against him, slamming into his midsection and then into the concrete sidewalk. "AAAH! My _squeedilyspooch_!" Zim clutched at himself, doubling over in pain. GIR smiled up at his master as Zim slowly and painfully started walking again to his arch rival's front door.   
  
Gaz paused her game, clenching her teeth in utter irritation. If she had one more interruption from her brother or anyone that knew her brother after this, she would dismember whoever it was and put their head on a pike in the front yard as a warning to all. Stalking up to the door, she opened it before Zim had a chance to even ring the doorbell, stopping him in mid-cringe.   
  
GIR smiled up at her, making a little happy, gushy noise. Gaz returned his adoration with a stern glare, then looked at Zim.   
  
"What do you want?" She inquired coldly.   
  
"I.. uh.." Zim faltered under her frightening gaze. "I need to know if you have seen your Earth-stink brother! It is of the _utmost importance_ that I find him!" His eye twitched a little as he placed his arms behind his back, lacing his fingers together.   
  
"He's upstairs in his room," she said as she went back to the couch, uncaring and leaving the door open so that the Irken could enter. Zim looked down at GIR, then led him inside, where he immediately hopped up onto the couch next to Gaz, who had gone back to her game. After shutting the door, Zim stared at her for a moment, wondering if she would rip off his head if he interrupted her again.  
  
"Dib-sister?"   
  
"What?" She growled in response. Zim held his ground.  
  
"How is he?" He asked hesitantly, tilting his head to one side as he looked at her, then looked in the direction of the stairs.  
  
"How is he? _Stupid_, as usual. He's acting weirder than normal." She left it at that, intent on ignoring everyone as she fought against the evil pigs to win her game. GIR was silent, but still stared at her with that adoring look, he liked the Gaz-human.   
  
Not daring to say more, Zim started up the stairs, listening carefully for any sounds of the Dib, and peeking around corners just in case the human had set a trap for him. Convinced that there was nothing horrible waiting for him, save for the human himself, he walked down the hallway with more confidence. He pondered silently as he walked, thinking of how he could get the human to cooperate and come back to his base. He could always knock him out with some heavy object and drag him back.. or he could trick the human with some ingenious plan.. or he could have GIR fly him back to the base, though the thought of Dib getting queasy to the point of throwing up everywhere again was very unpleasant to Zim. He shuddered in disgust, pushing open a door.  
  
Nope, definitely not the room with Dib in it. The room was dark.. the one window it contained didn't even let the sunlight in, as it was covered with a heavy purple curtain. Books, video games, and skulls were all over the place.. Zim shut the door quickly, not wanting to face the Gaz-human's wrath if she found him snooping around her room. He pressed his back against the door and heaved a sigh.   
  
"Hmmm.." He pushed open another door, which revealed the upstairs bathroom. "Fitting for the _Dib-stink_ to live in, but no!" he said to himself as he moved on to the next room. He paused outside the last door in the hallway, listening. He could hear Dib's soft snoring from the other side of the door. He opened it with caution, as if awaiting an attack from a rabid animal.   
  
This room was dark as well, but a little bit of sunlight filtered in through the blinds on the windows. Zim's large eyes adjusted within moments. He took everything in, the colors, the layout.. it might be useful someday, when he was plotting against the Dib again. He snickered a little as he stared at the human's laptop. '_Pathetic_.' He was curious though, to know what data the human possessed. Especially when it concerned him, but he couldn't allow himself to be distracted. Not now.  
  
"Where are you, Dib-monkey?" He looked around the room and found the noises to be coming from a bundled form on the bed. "Dib?" He poked at the blankets, but the snoring noise only got louder. "Would you stop snarling at me and come out of there?!" Zim tapped his foot and crossed his arms, becoming annoyed with the hiding Dib. He jumped up onto the bed, causing it to shake a little. "Stop hiding from me like a coward!"   
  
"5 more minutes, Gaz.." Dib said sleepily, rolling over. Zim glared down at him.  
  
"You confuse me with your _wretched _Earth-sister? Stop talking madness, Dib-human! Come back to the base with me so that I can take your camera and _destr_- I mean, _cure_ you." He grabbed the blankets and pulled hard, then fell off the bed and into the tangled mass of the comforter. "Gahh!"  
  
Dib shivered and pulled his legs in close to his body, then resumed his sleeping. Zim fought with the blankets, kicking and screaming until he managed to defeat them, leaving them in a pile on the floor. He then picked up one of his large contacts that had fallen out in the struggle and popped it back on over his eye with a snarl.   
  
"_**Diiiib**_!" He whined, jumping up on the bed again and looking at the boy once more. "This is getting very, very, very, _very_ annoying!" He grabbed his rival's shoulders and shook him relentlessly until the boy woke up, which only took a second or two.   
  
"Huh, wha?" Dib looked into Zim's large eyes, then yelped and kicked him off of the bed. "ZIM! What the hell are you doing?!" That was the last face he wanted to wake up to.. and for the second time that hour Zim was doubled over in pain, clutching at his organs.  
  
"_Foolish_... Dib-weasel!" He panted, then straightened, knowing he was going to have bruises. He could feel the blood pooling under his skin already. "Why must you always kick me there?"  
  
"Well, I could kick you in your horrible green head if you like," Dib retorted, smirking at the Invader.   
  
"Smelly _human_! This is no _time_ for your aggravating _nonsense_! I need to take you back to the base so-"  
  
"Never! I'm not going to spend the last few hours of my ridiculously short life with _you_!" Dib protested, jumping off of his bed and landing in a sort of defensive stance, before sinking to the floor as his knees buckled again, feeling lightheaded. Zim sighed.   
  
"The annoyance sharks are swimming in my incredible brain, Dib-monkey," he crossed his arms and looked down upon his nemesis. "Now come quietly or I'll have to take you by force."  
  
"And how do you expect to do that, _Zim_? I hope you're planning on carrying me, because I'm not moving." He would have added 'you'll never take me alive,' but he wasn't sure that would be a good thing to say in the current situation he was in. A sly, sadistic smirk had formed on the alien's face, which was unnerving. Dib could have sworn that he could see Zim's evil brain working and knew immediately that he should have kept his mouth quiet and fended him off with a cattle-prod or something.  
  
Zim let out a small, evil sounding sort of cackle, then quickly grabbed Dib's blanket and threw it over him. Dib tried to fight his way out of it but all he ever saw was blackness as it enveloped him and heard the alien's insane giggling as he started dragging the captured boy across the floor.

* * *

Okay.. now I have to finish my Zim fanart and study for my college placement test! I have much to do! _So much!_ ::runs off:: 


	7. Zim cares and Purple leaves a message wh...

Ehhhh.. this chapter is kind of short.. sorry about that. It took me forever to write this thing! My computer keeps freezing on me, so I can't get anything done! Also, thank you all again for your wonderful reviews, and I would just like to say that this fic isn't actually going to be a ZADR, even though it has a lot of potential.. however, it may end up as a friendship fic by the end of it. I'm not sure, yet.. I'm trying to make up my mind.

**Chapter 7 - Zim cares and Purple leaves a message while Red eats his important and holy nachos...**

* * *

_thunk... thunk... thunk...  
_  
ow.. ow.. owww!  
  
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"  
  
"ZIM! Would you cut it out?! OW!"  
  
"Both of you shut up!!!"  
  
Poor Dib.. the insane little Invader was dragging him down the stairs, and his large head was cracking against each step. He felt like he was going to be knocked out of conciousness. Gaz was annoyed.. _very_ annoyed. Normally, she would have been thrilled to see her brother be put through such pain and torment, but Zim and Dib's rivalry was really getting on her nerves.  
  
With a snarl she shut off her Gameslave 2, then picked up Zim and hurled him out onto the lawn. Zim was surprised at the little purple-haired girl's strength, but didn't have long to marvel at this, seeing as she was soon dumping the tangled mass of blankets that held the Dib right on top of him. The wind was knocked out of him, and before he could push Dib off he found that he was clutching his head, rather than at his organs once more. Gaz had just picked up GIR and chucked him high into the air, and when he came back down he hit Zim right in the middle of his forehead.   
  
"Ohhh.. my _amazing_ cranium!" He hissed in pain.  
  
"Whooo! I want to do that again!" GIR giggled, then danced around on Zim's face. Dib just groaned loudly and tried to free himself once more.  
  
"Don't come back here **ever** again!" Gaz glared at the three of them and slammed the door.   
  
"GIR! Get off of my face, now!" Zim shouted. GIR saluted and jumped off of his master's face, then continued with his dancing. Zim pushed the Dib-human off of him with a shudder, then stood up quickly, brushing himself off. He looked down at the struggling Dib, then grabbed the blanket that he had converted into a net/bag and started dragging the boy down the driveway.  
  
"Zim! Wait! Stop!" Dib protested, still trying to get free. Being dragged across concrete (even with a blanket wrapped around you) hurts like hell. Zim turned around and looked down at the annoying boy, untangling him and narrowing his eyes.  
  
"What is it now, _Dib_?"  
  
"You can't just _drag_ me back to your base!"  
  
"And why not? It seems to be going well so far."  
  
"Because I don't want to go, and it's not going well for me!" Dib glared up at the alien from his spot on the ground.   
  
"Sooo.. let me get this straight," Zim said, crossing his arms in front of him as he stared down at Dib, a look of amusement evident on his green face. "You would rather stay here and die in the middle of your driveway all alone than come back to the base so I can attempt to cure you and change your hideous fate?"  
  
"Yes," Dib said, looking confused for a moment.  
  
"Very well," Zim waved at the human and started marching off. It was almost a form of reverse psychology. Dib stared after him, thinking.  
  
"Hey! Zim! Wait a minute! Did you say you were actually trying to save me?" Dib had pushed himself up into a sitting position as his bespecticalled eyes followed his nemesis. Zim grinned before turning around to face him.  
  
"Well duh, Dib-human! I thought you would have been smart enough to figure that out by now.. not to mention I told you that when I was in your filthy living-place.. room..thing." Zim was smirking from the end of the driveway, but he walked back over to the human. "Why, Dib-stink? Have you changed your mind?" Dib gave him a skeptical look, tilting his head to the side.  
  
"How do I know that I can trust you to save my life, Zim?" The question sounded silly, coming out of his mouth. Zim stared at him for a moment, then almost fell over laughing, both an evil laugh and an 'I can't believe you just said that' laugh.   
  
"That's the beauty of it, Dib-monkey! You _can't_! You see, I will never trust you, and you will never trust me.." Zim stated when his laughter had subsided and he could talk coherently again. "But like it or not, you don't have very much of an alternative choice in the given situation. You see, Dib, much like you declare yourself the last hope of your own puny, pathetic planet.. **I** am your last hope." He smirked, staring down at the human-boy. Dib hated to admit it, but Zim was right.   
  
"Fine," he grumbled and struggled to stand before the Irken. "Fine," he repeated, straightening his glasses and glaring at him. "I'll go back with you, but don't strap me to that table again!"  
  
"Oh, what's the matter, _Dib_, did it make you feel weak? Vulnerable?" Zim chuckled darkly as he taunted him, and then started to make his way down the sidewalk, occasionally looking back over his shoulder at the human to make sure he was still following. He was starting to enjoy the walk home in the afternoon sun, especially since Dib was silent for most of the way. In fact, he had almost forgotten that the human was there until he heard Dib calling after him. He looked back and saw Dib trying to get up again, and having much more difficulty. He snorted in disgust and marched back to the boy.  
  
"Earth-monkey, I would like to get back home _sometime_ today!" He ranted. "What is wrong with you now?" He was frustrated with Dib's immense slowness.  
  
"Well, obviously I can't get up," Dib glared up at the Invader once more. "If I could, then I wouldn't have called you back here." Zim heaved a heavy sigh of annoyance and reluctantly reached down, grabbing his enemy's hand and pulling him back to his feet. Zim looked around for his robot-slave, but GIR was nowhere to be found.   
  
"GIR!" Not even a rustle in the bushes... "GIR?" Nothing at all... Zim growled and tried calling him on the microphone, but still got nothing. "Fine," he muttered, then looked back at Dib and shuddered at what he would have to do to get the human back to his base. His eyes narrowed once more as he brushed the dust and dirt off of the boy's clothes. He took Dib's arm and placed it around his neck and shoulders, then wrapped one of his arms around the boy's waist, supporting him so that he could walk. Another shudder went through him, all the way down his alien spine.. the human was much too close... it was _disgusting_. Why did he agree with his good side to save this foul creature? He could have kicked himself.   
  
Dib was feeling irritated and disgusted as well, though not to the same extent as Zim. He had never been this close to Zim, and Zim had never willingly touched him unless it was an attempt on his life or something. He could see Zim blanch each time he came in contact with his human skin, as if he was the most disgusting thing in the entire universe.. like a cockroach or something.. but if he knew anything about Zim, that was probably exactly how he felt about him anyway. Dib sighed and started walking again, disliking very much the fact that he needed Zim's help to do it. For the lack of being able to do much else, he decided to attempt a relatively normal conversation with the alien.   
  
"Um.. Zim?" He asked after a few minutes of aided walking. Zim didn't reply right away, he just looked over at the Dib to acknowledge him. He was still a paler shade of green, not yet adjusted to the human's close proximity, it made him feel sick.  
  
"W-what is it, Dib...human?" One of his contact-covered eyes was twitching.  
  
"I was just wondering.. how are you planning to help me?" Dib was staring at him intently, watching the Irken's every move. The alien was snapped back into reality, not that he wasn't there already.. he just wasn't thinking about Dib's possible fate. Zim didn't know how he should tell him.. he couldn't tell him about the Tallests, or the antidote.. a voice inside of him was telling him not to get the boy's hopes up, then another was telling him not to give his enemy enough information to use against him. He stared at the Dib-human, hoping for once that he could read him like a book.  
  
"I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, Dib." Dib raised an eyebrow at him, but Zim wasn't lying. If the Tallests couldn't help, he wasn't sure what he would do.   
  
"You mean you _don't_ have some incredible plan?"  
  
"**FOOL**! Of _course_ I have an incredible plan! An amazing plan! I am Zim! I'm just not sure if it's going to work yet."  
  
Dib couldn't help but laugh at his nemesis. He was offended so easily by the very notion that he wouldn't be able to think of anything. The green of his skin had brightened again, and he ranted on and on about how _incredibly_ stupid the Dib-pig was. Dib noticed a change in Zim's body temperature, also... when he had been much colder than the human before, as his anger rose his temperature did with it.   
  
"How dare you even suggest that I wouldn't be able to think _your_ way out of this? Pitiful human! Your pathetic life is on the line here due to your own stupidity and you insult me by insinuating that I can't think of an ingenious plan to save you because deep down I really _do_ care?!" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Zim wished he had kept it shut. Zim's skin visibly paled again and there was now an awkward silence between them. Angel-Zim's filthy niceness-work was done.

* * *

Neither of them said anything until they got back to Zim's house and the alien had taken him back down below again. Zim sealed off all of the levels but one, so that both he and Dib were stuck down there unless he opened everything again. This was relatively easy, but he wanted to make sure that even if Dib could move around he couldn't get too much information about the way that Zim lived, or get ahold of any weapons that he could use against him later.   
  
Without a word, Zim handed him what looked like a remote control. It was fairly normal looking, except for that the buttons were labelled in Irken. Dib figured out what it was for before the alien had even started explaining it to him. He touched a button and a hovering disk appeared from the end of the hallway, zooming up to the two of them. Zim was impressed by how quickly the human caught on.  
  
"This transport will take you anywhere on this floor, Dib-human. I've sealed off the others, but you can roam freely here.. mostly because there is nothing to endanger myself or harm you, but also because there are no computers here that you will be able to gain acess to. Now," he blinked at Dib, who was now sitting cross-legged on the hover disk. "I have to check up on something, so.. um.. whatever." The Irken waved his hand dismissively, and marched off to find the closest computer console.   
  
Dib followed him from a distance, moving the transport slowly forward. Zim stopped near a blank wall, then pressed a single button in the center of it. The button initiated a change in the wall, which was in fact a type of hologram, and a console appeared. The monitor flashed as Zim pressed a few more buttons and a message appeared on screen. "New messages," the computer stated blankly. Zim smiled and Dib stared in awe up at the screen as he stopped the hover disk behind the Invader. Zim knew that he was there, but he wasn't too concerned about the human because he was sure that he couldn't read Irken at all. A list of message titles appeared on the screen.. there was one from GIR, which was just a long trail of nonsense about tap-dancing penguins that were swimming in butter and large centipedes feeding on the intestines of blue cows. Zim shook his head silently. Of course that one was actually in English.   
  
Looking down the list he found what he was looking for. "AHA!" He shouted suddenly, making Dib jump a little.   
  
"What?" The human asked uncertainly. Zim touched the message, which expanded on the screen, showing a video feed of Tallest Purple.  
  
"Zim, We found what you were looking for.. or rather, I did. Red was too busy with the very important eating of nachos, and I'm sure that you would agree with how important that is." Zim nodded silently. Purple went on after a brief pause. "The file is attached, make sure you follow everything _exactly_," he warned. "Or it will not work. Happy now?" Purple said, as if he could hear Zim's answer of yes. "Good. Now, leave me alone so I can go back to... umm.. yeah." With that, the message ended. Zim pressed another button and the directions for how the original serum was made were downloaded into the computer. He pulled out a small, electronic screen from his PAK and connected it to the computer with a wire so that he could take the information with him. He was very glad that Purple had been brief.   
  
Dib looked puzzled as the computer resumed the look of a wall again. That was.. weird.   
  
"Zim, who was that?" He blinked and looked over at the Invader, but his vision started clouding a little, as if he wasn't wearing his glasses.   
  
"That.. that was my great uncle Milford!" Zim exclaimed as he looked down at the little touch screen in his hands. Dib shook his head silently... damn Zim was weird.


	8. I hate needles I hate needles

Okay, you wanted the next one, so here it is.. I wrote this this afternoon while I had some peace.. yess.. peace is good. I have to go back to work tomorrow, which may mean less updates again, but I hope not. I may work on it lots after work, provided the computer cooperates. Bah! _Inferior_ machine! Anyway, I hope that you like it.. and sorry for Zim's slight out of character-ness and stuff in the last chapter.. I'm having a little trouble with Zim, mostly because I want him to care.. and I'm having trouble making Dib depressed.. heh heh.. I'm still trying to decide if I want this to be ZADR or not, because I know that a few of those who are reading it may not be fans of ZADR and that a few of you are... hmmm.. I'm torn. I don't want to chase anyone away.. heh heh.. My boyfriend says that I should flip a coin, because he doesn't mind either way. Should I leave their romancy fate up to a coin? My sister is making cake! Whoo!

**Chapter 8 - I hate needles.. I** **hate needles...**

* * *

"Your Great Uncle who?" Dib asked his nemesis as he tried to look over his shoulder at the small, handheld monitor-thing. Not like he could read it anyway, and something weird was going on with his eyes. He couldn't focus on the screen.  
  
"Nevermind that, you foolish monkey-child," Zim waved him away and marched down the hallway to gain access to the medical room. Dib followed him still, wanting answers.   
  
"Come on, Zim.. who was that, really? Is it one of your horrible monarchs or something that sent you here to destroy the planet? And if that's true, then why is he helping you save me?" Zim said nothing. In fact, he was getting tired of the Dib's incessant questioning... babbling.. "Well?" Dib asked again after waiting a few moments for the Irken to answer.   
  
"Silence," Zim commanded, summoning the monitor in the room from it's spot on the ceiling again. Dib rolled his eyes.   
  
"I want to know, Zim."   
  
"But I am not willing to tell you, Dib-monkey. Now, go... play in the traffic or something while I try to figure this out."  
  
"Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. You sealed off the rest of your base, remember?" Dib shook his head at the sad little Invader before him. Zim sighed in annoyance.  
  
"It is an _expression_ Dib. Your filthy Earth-parents never told you to play in the traffic? They really should have. Maybe it would make my life easier." He smirked at the boy and waved him away once more as he brought the directions to make the serum up on the larger screen. "Okay.. I'm going to need.. hmm.." He walked out the door and left Dib to stare at the monitor. Dib, not wanting to be left alone, floated down the hall after Zim. He was eager to know what his plan was. So many questions were filling his brain, ones that he may not ever know the answer to.  
  
Zim unlocked the elevator and stepped inside, Dib tried to follow him but Zim glared and pushed him and his hover disk out the door. "Ohhh no," he said. "You are not getting onto the storage level again. I don't need you getting into more stupid trouble than you already are." Dib tried to protest, but Zim had already ordered the computer to shut the door and was gone in an instant.   
  
Dib glowered at the now closed doors, then moved off down the hall. At least he could use this time to explore what Zim had given him free access to. He touched that button in the wall where Zim had gotten his message from Purple previously. The computer console appeared again. He tried to remember what buttons the alien had pressed to get into his messages, but he couldn't. He should have paid more attention. He tried random combinations, and eventually what looked like a username and password screen came up. Dib shook his head.  
  
"User name?" The computer asked aloud.  
  
"I don't have one." Dib admitted.   
  
"Sorry," the computer said, and promptly shut itself down.   
  
"Oh, come on.. just one message?" Dib looked up at the ceiling, asking the base itself.  
  
"No. Master Zim has blocked access from all computer terminals to anyone that does not have a user name and password. You are out of luck, Dib-monkey," the computer said in the same monotone as before. Dib raised one of his eyebrows, Zim had even programmed his computers to insult him.

* * *

Zim rooted around in a large box inside a storage room full of machinery, searching... "It has to be in here somewhere.." He muttered to himself, throwing random objects into another box. "Hmmmm... _here it is_!" He announced this loudly to no one, being alone on that floor. He wondered vaguely what the Dib was up to, but didn't really care because Dib was no danger to him where he was. He held up a small machine with several little arm-like appendages, each ending in a horrible looking needle.   
  
He then picked up the small screen that he had carried with him, checking to see what else he would need. "Okay," he went back to muttering. "More Irken plasma.. that's easy enough.. what? Fresh?" Zim had been hoping to get some from storage, he didn't like pain. "Damn it!" He cursed loudly, then continued reading down the list.. "Blood from the infected species?! _**Disgusting**_!!!!" His stomach lurched at the thought of having to touch Dib again, let alone take his filthy Earth-blood. It made him quite queasy.  
  
He continued reading nonetheless, there was a long list of chemicals, and luckily he had all of these in storage as well.. so it was fairly simple sounding... the only troubling part was that the serum would take about 30 hours before it would be ready. He blanched again upon reading this.. that would be cutting it close.. so close.. Apparently the Irkens had been trying to develop this for a long time before it actually worked on the lizard-monsters.   
  
"Horrible.." he murmured, then filled the little machine with new syringes and grabbed another bag full of them just in case they were needed, then headed to the room where he kept the chemicals. Halfway there, all of the lights on the floor went out, leaving him in pitch-black darkness.   
  
"Emergency shutdown sequence initiated," the computer announced, then became as silent as the darkness that surrounded him.  
  
"_GIR!!!!_" Zim shouted at the top of his lungs, his fist clenching around the bag and the machine that he carried, his body trembling. He soon remembered that GIR was not home, and fumed even more. "**DIB!!!!**"

* * *

"Shit." Dib said blankly as he stared at the darkened control panel. He didn't mean to do that.. he had just been trying to get into Zim's messages again. "I must have pressed the wrong button or.. something." It was hopeless to try and see in the darkness, especially when you're underground.   
  
He sighed audibly, wondering how he could get it to come back on. He listened to see if he could hear any signs of Zim, he had heard him shouting from somewhere far above him, but heard nothing else. He laughed softly, Zim might just decide to kill him now out of pure irritation. The hover disk had descended to the floor as the power went out, so he was pretty much stuck there.. alone in the deep darkness.   
  
Not even a light flashed in the gloom, it was like being in a cave. If his vision was dimming more, he couldn't tell. He wished that he had remembered to bring a flashlight or something, but he hadn't been expecting this.   
  
Zim was much more prepared for this than he was.. seeing as how he lived with GIR, and GIR was always breaking something. He pressed a button on his PAK, and his spider-legs jutted out of it. He soon realized that his antennae were not picking up on anything in the darkness and then remembered that he was still wearing his disguise. He quickly discarded the wig and his contacts, staring into the gloom once more.   
  
With a breath, his occular implants activated, allowing him to see in the darkness. His antennae were picking up the air current that ran through the hall. He followed the air to the doorway of the room which housed the chemicals. Stepping through, he managed to find what he needed to use on the serum, and carried them with him in a metal box. Zim stopped in the hallway again, pausing to think.  
  
Where was that doorway? He had never had to use it.. the power had never completely gone out in the base like this before. He could have _strangled_ the Dib-filth for his annoying habit of making life harder for the Invader. Growling, he started down the hallway again, his spider-legs clicking on the floor as he moved. He did find the door, hidden in a hallway that diverged from the main one. Prying the door open, he descended a long flight of stairs, going down to Dib on the level below.   
  
Every single door of the base was open to Dib now.. he could have had a field day if his legs were working correctly and he had his camera. He could have given Zim so much hell... why did he have to be dying _now_? It was just so unfair. Such a perfect oppourtunity. He heard a faint noise from far off.. what was that? A creaking sound down from the end of the corridor.. his hearing had seemed to sharpen when he lost his ability to see. He wondered if Zim could see in this darkness. He soon got his answer, though, when he heard the tapping of Zim's spider-legs on the metal floor, coming closer at a steady walking speed.  
  
"What have you done _now_, Earth-stink?!" Zim growled and Dib heard a metallic sort of clunk as Zim set down the box containing the vials of chemicals and the extraction machine. The Irken stared down at the boy, and the boy looked confused as he searched the darkness above him for Zim. A smile that Dib couldn't see played across the Irken's face as he realized that his enemy was blind.   
  
"I touched the wrong button?" Dib suggested, smiling slightly.  
  
"You just can't stay out of trouble, can you, _Dib_? So many horrible things I could do to you.. oh, the hellish beauty of it all!" He ranted, then looked at the dark console as he hovered above the Dib. Dib just rolled his eyes, Zim threatened him all the time, why should he care enough to be afraid now? Zim reached forward and pressed a few buttons, the computer hummed softly, coming back to life. Zim's eyes adjusted to the light from the monitor almost instantly, but Dib saw no light at all. He heard a few more beeping noises, then the hover disk rose again from underneath him, lifting him into the air once more.. the lights came on in the base like a flood, Dib saw a mild flickering which lead to darkness again.  
  
"What's happening?" he turned his head in confusion once more.   
  
"I just turned the power back on.. duh," Zim said irritably, looking down at his nemesis, then drawing the spider-legs neatly back into his PAK. Dib looked around in confusion and then finally fear, and Zim looked at him strangely, as if the boy was crazier than usual. "What is wrong with you now, human?" Dib looked right at him and just blinked, his eyes had a curious, glazed-over sort of look.   
  
"I-I don't know... I can't see the lights. I can't see anything..."  
  
"What madness are you speaking of now?" Zim leaned closer, looking intently at Dib's large amber eyes. He waved his hand in front of the human's face.. drew his fist back and acted like he was going to hit him... Dib didn't flinch or show any signs of knowing what was going on. Dib really was blind.. not only in the dark, but in the light as well. The Dib was now even more helpless than he had ever seen him.. he couldn't move, couldn't see.. what would go next? Probably his brain, Zim thought.. and part of him almost laughed with glee, but it was quickly drowned in a strange sort of sorrowful pity that he felt inside.   
  
"Are you sure the lights are back on?" Dib asked.. he knew it was a stupid question, and he knew the answer to it, but he didn't want to believe that he was really getting worse. The promise of death still hadn't sunken in.  
  
Zim picked up the controls for the transporter from the ground, then picked up the items he had brought and placed them on the hover disk next to Dib. "Don't ask inane questions," he said softly, guiding Dib forward. He would have to get to work on the serum as quickly as possible, and do more research as well, just to make sure that it wouldn't kill the boy.. After all, what might work on some horrible lizards may not work the same way on humans.. what if he ended up killing the boy faster, rather than saving him? He felt his insides twitch again...he didn't want to think of Dib dying anymore, no matter how much he may hate him...no matter how much he had secretly started to not hate him so much.   
  
"AAAHHH!" Zim shrieked, holding his head and wanting his stupid thoughts to cease. Dib held his ears.. sounds were becoming louder than they actually were, starting to give him a Zim-induced headache, much like what Red tended to get each time Zim called.   
  
"What the hell's the matter with you?" Dib asked, glaring in the direction of Zim's voice.  
  
"Nothing! Leave me alone, _smelly_ human!" Zim shouted, glaring daggers back at the boy and shaking his fist at him. His shouting caused Dib to flinch and cover his ears again.  
  
"Ugh... you're too loud, you know that?"  
  
"Whatever, Earth-vermin," He led Dib back into that same medical room that they had been in minutes and also hours before. He pushed him roughly back onto the medical table, but this time Dib felt something softer beneath him.. not just the cold, unforgiving metal that had been there before. Zim stared at the human and found himself blanching again, he didn't want to do this.. with a sigh he pulled out the extraction machine with it's small, deadly looking needles and pulled a glove off of one of his thin green arms.   
  
He adjusted the machine to take what he needed for the life-saving (or so he hoped) serum, and pressed a button on it. The machine beeped and latched onto him, sunk the needles into his veins... why it needed so much, he did not know. He usually didn't extract his plasma this way, he didn't take so much at a time.. it hurt, and he made a small pained noise as the needles took what they needed and pulled out of his skin again.   
  
He gasped loudly when he was free.. then opened the new bag of syringes and started loading them into the extractor once more. Dib looked in his direction with both curiosity and renewed fear.. what was Zim doing?  
  
"Zim?" He questioned as he felt the little Irken's hands on one of his arms, pushing up the sleeve on his trenchcoat and the shirt he was wearing underneath. "What are you doing?"  
  
"Just relax, Dib-human," Zim said, trying to use a tone of reassurance. He didn't need the human panicking now... he could ruin everything.. he could hurt himself.. he could damage the extractor, and it would waste precious time if he had to get a new one.. "this may hurt."  
  
"What might hurt? What are you-" Dib gasped and tried to push Zim away as the needles pierced his arm. He could feel his blood being drained into them, could hear his heartbeat in his ears. He may of let out a yelp or a scream, but he didn't hear it over his heartbeat. When it was over, he felt even weaker than before, not to mention there was much more pain. "Wh-What did you do to me?" He stared in the direction that he thought Zim was in.. he could just barely hear the Irken's breathing.   
  
Zim took the syringes filled with his enemy's blood from the machine and turned it off.. human blood was so.. red. Deep, dark, beautiful red. He smiled and held them up to the light. It was disgusting, but this substance was what kept the Earth-filth going.. nasty, beautiful, _horrible_ blood. He set them down and pulled his glove back on.   
  
"I needed a blood sample," he said as he set all of the things he needed on a table on the other side of the room.   
  
"That hurt!"  
  
"Well, of course it hurt, Dib-monkey. That was six needles at the same time!" Zim's antannae twitched slightly, he was staring at the screen and monitoring the Dib's body once more. "Computer, alert me when GIR _finally_ comes home."  
  
"GIR is home," the computer responded, showing a picture of GIR now on the couch, watching some inane soap opera and giggling madly as the actress did the most horribly executed scene of sadness ever. Zim glared at the monitor.  
  
"Figures he'd show up _after_ the power is restored. **GIR**!!!" He shouted. Dib groaned with pain and covered his ears again. The noise carried up to the main room, where GIR took off down the elevator in the garbage can and appeared by Zim's side in a matter of seconds.   
  
"Yes, my master!" He saluted with his red eyes, then they changed back to blue as he stuck his tongue out.   
  
"GIR, I need you to fetch me some of that _disgusting_ human food for the Dib.. he seems hungry," he smiled slightly as he stared at the status of Dib. It was true.. Dib hadn't eaten since before he had come to Zim's house for some spying... and even though it hadn't even been half a day yet, it seemed like such a long.. yet such a short time ago... don't ask me how a period of time can feel both short and long.. but to him it did. His stomach growled loudly as a confirmation of Zim's statement.. and GIR giggled and disappeared again. 


	9. GIR's cooking isn't so good, and somethi...

Whooo! Sorry I'm late, my lovely readers. I wish to hug you all. Goopy Goo gave me a 8pm deadline, but I missed it because I was watching tv.. but it's not 8pm in California yet! AHAHAHAHA!!!

Ummm.. other than that.. this Chapter is a little short, but hopefully good.. and yes, I will eventually be explaining how the horrible cure for Zim-poisoning works... yess... just give me some time to think about that. ::giggles:: sorry... I have also decided, as some of you have told me, (hugs for you) that I will be following my heart with this one and writing it the way that I originally intended. This story is not going to be a ZADR, however, my next stroy will be.. and I already have an idea. I did write a slashy fic about Red and Purple, for those of you who wish to read that. :)

**Chapter 9 - GIR's cooking isn't so good, and something horrible happens... something just horrible!**

* * *

About 40 minutes and a plate of muffins later, Dib was full, but didn't feel so well. GIR had baked the muffins himself, which smelled really good.. and also tasted really good.. but they still made Dib sick. He gave Zim a suspicious look, which Zim ignored. He had no reason to poison the Dib more than he already was.. perhaps GIR was just a bad cook, or put something in the muffins that wasn't supposed to be. Either way, Dib's stomach was hopping around and making him turn a slight shade of sickly green.  
  
He groaned and clutched at his stomach. GIR was busy eating the muffin wrappers that he had discarded, and Zim was busy thoroughly reading the instructions that Purple had sent to him. He normally probably wouldn't have taken the time to do this, but he couldn't ignore a direct order from his Tallests... unless they told him to go off and explode or something, or banished him again, but even then he would have felt horrible about it. His reading was interrupted by another groan from Dib, and then a sickening splattering sound on the floor, followed by some loud coughing.   
  
Zim grimaced and dared to look up. GIR was laughing insanely.  
  
"My muffins don't agree with Dib's organs!" He shouted, which hurt poor Dib's ears yet again. The color had drained from Zim's green skin once more as he looked at the disgusting pool of vomit on the floor.. his own insides were now lurching dangerously.   
  
"Ohhh.. gross!" He looked away, he needed to look at anything but the remains of the regurgitated muffins.. gross gross gross.. Zim sighed and looked at GIR, who was still giggling like a maniac drunk on soda. "GIR!"   
  
"Yes sir!" GIR stopped and stood there, saluting him yet again.  
  
"Fetch me the mop," Zim said weakly. He looked at the sick Dib, who was now passed out on the table. At least he hadn't been strapped down.. that would have been even more disgusting. He wondered if it really was GIR's cooking (seeing as he couldn't stomach human food most of the time either) or if Dib's body just wouldn't let him keep anything down. He shook his head as GIR sprinted from the room, back up to the storage level to grab the mop that Zim had used to clean up Dib's mess from his earlier mishap.   
  
He went over to the unconscious boy, shuddering as he stepped around the revolting puddle. He stared at him for a while, as if he was half expecting him to wake up and say something stupid about Bigfoot or something. He looked curiously at Dib's glasses, then pulled them off of the boy's face. He held them up to the light, then put them over his eyes. Everything went blurry.   
  
"Why do you wear these _horrible_ things?" He asked aloud. They gave him a headache, almost as big of a headache as Dib gave him normally. Dib showed no sign of hearing him at all, so he placed them back where they had been on the boy's face. He glared down at the silent boy, then went back over to the monitor so that he could check the status of the Dib. His body temperature had changed.. it was going up... a fever, he remembered hearing the nurse at the skool call it. "Interesting.." He said, looking at Dib once more. He was interrupted when GIR reappeared.   
  
"Git along, horsey!" He yelled. The bucket covered his entire body and he was riding on the mop as if it was a horse. "I got a ten-gallon hat!"   
  
"GIR, give me the _mop_!" Zim said with a sort of waver in his voice as he clenched his fists.   
  
"Okay, okay.. sheesh.." GIR took the bucket off of his head and handed his master the mop. Zim summoned a hose from the ceiling with the touch of a button and filled the bucket so that he could clean up after the wretched Dib-human. It was so disgusting.. and it was a good thing he didn't have those germ goggles on or else he would have screamed loud enough to wake the dead, or wake the unconscious Dib, at least.   
  
He grumbled and felt sick the whole time, but he couldn't trust GIR with it, half afraid that GIR would do something completely gross like start dancing in the vomit, or throwing it or.. eww.. he shuddered at the thought. "So nasty," he muttered when the floor was finally clean again and he had gotten rid of the filthy water that had been in the bucket. He looked at the Dib again.  
  
"I hope you know that the workings of your digestive anatomy are _**disgusting**_!" He ranted at the boy, snarling. "I also hope that there is no more food left in your.. stomach." Dib let out a small, pained moan as his eyebrows knitted and his eyes opened slowly, but he was just as blind as he had previously been. Too bad it hadn't just been a bad dream. "It's horrible to see that you're not dead yet, Dib-monkey, but welcome back."   
  
"Why are you trying to save me and say that you care if you want me dead?" Dib asked softly, trying to remember what had just happened.   
  
"Because I can't let you die of your own stupidity," Zim said as he marched back over to the table where the serum was to be made. "I want to kill you later with some ingenious plan, then I can be proud and laugh and throw a party for the _filthy_ skool children and blow them up with a radioactive weenie! As soon as I have the satisfaction of destroying you with my own hands, _no one_ will stand in my way!" After that was said he giggled evilly, sneering at the Dib.  
  
"Why would you do that, though?" Dib questioned, thinking out loud, his blind eyes looking in the direction of Zim's insane laughter. "I mean.. you hate me, and I hate you.. it's sort of weird, Zim, that you would save me now just to kill me later. I mean, why not get it over with?"   
  
"I did think of that, _Earth-stink_.. but it would be..." Zim struggled to think of the correct word.. Dib hadn't realized he had actually asked the question aloud, what if Zim changed his mind? "hmmm.. that would be..."  
  
"Monkey?" GIR asked, smiling at his master.  
  
"No GIR.. not monkey," Zim said, crossing his arms and thinking. "Attacking and killing you in your weakened state would be... dishonorable, dastardly and.. devious! The 3 D's of DOOM!" One of Dib's eyes twitched. It truly seemed like something that Zim would do.  
  
"The three D's of doom? That's stupid!"   
  
"_SILENCE!_ I shall decide who is stupid here, slug-worm!" With that, Zim picked up a muffin wrapper from the floor (one that GIR hadn't attempted to eat yet), crumpled it and threw it at Dib's large head as the boy flinched from his loudness again.   
  
"Hey!" Dib felt around on the table and found the wrapper after it bounced off of his glasses. With a growl he threw it back at Zim, but missed horribly due to his newfound blindness.  
  
"**HA**! Dib-stink!" Zim smirked. "I should just sit here and throw things at you until you go crazy!" Such a mighty Irken threat it was.... not. "You are so inferior to me, I could laugh and... eat candy! Eat candy! yesss! Bwahahahahaha!" He pulled a candy bar out of his PAK.   
  
Dib wanted to shut Zim up so much.. damn he was loud.. he felt another muffin wrapper on the table near him.. if only he could see. But wait..... he _could_ see. What the hell? He smirked, his blindness having subsided for just a few moments, and threw the wrapper right at Zim while he was laughing his psychotic, evil laughter. The paper ball went right into Zim's mouth, which stopped his laughing abruptly seeing as the Irken had started choking. He made coughing and hacking noises, all the while punching himself below his ribcage, trying to dislodge the evil hell-wrapper from his throat. He couldn't breathe.  
  
Zim turned the most horrible looking shade of blueish green, and now it was Dib's turn to laugh. Soon, though, the Irken collapsed on the floor, and his eyes slipped closed.  
  
"Master?" GIR stared down at the fallen Invader. "Are you sleeping?"  
  
"Zim?" Dib peered over the edge of the table to look at the Irken, he couldn't be.. dead? "Zim???" He called again.. not even a twitch of Zim's antennae.. "Zim, are you okay?" He cursed silently as his vision started to blur again. 

"........"

"Zim? Hello?" Normally, the thought of Zim being dead would have made him hop up and down and run through the streets shouting it joyfully at the top of his lungs, but not today. Why did his aim have to be so decent? Why?!


	10. The Secrets of Varda

(Horribly long Author's Note:) Hello again! Sorry for not updating sooner.. my mom banned us all from her computer.. I _need_ my own.. I need it! gah! Anyways, I am back online now (because I fixed it for her.. damn viruses and downloaded bullshit), so here is my update.. and as soon as I get this done and a few other things that I have to do done, I will be starting on the next chapter.   
  
It took me longer than usual to actually write this chapter.. I had to actually explain how the antidote works.. (which means, yes, I had to think!) finally, the thing's evil intesti-- I mean, the secret is revealed! Don't ask me where I got the name.. it just popped into my head. Curse me. I think it sounds a little farfetched, but I'm sure you'll all let me know in your wonderous reviews if you think so too.  
  
Also, I bought one of those freaky cow-can things.. like the nurse has in Dark Harvest.. yes, I do like playing with it. Moooo! My tea also tastes like pond-water, so I am switching to soda, and cheetos are really yummy! Now, let me rain some doom upon you with my chapter that does not make sense!!!! (insert dramatic, Professor Membrane-like echo here) Oh, it also sucks by the way, but I hope that you find it satisfactory.  
  
**Chapter 10 - The Secrets of Varda**

* * *

GIR continued to stare down at Zim, as if waiting for an answer. Dib was feeling a slight panic building in his insides. Zim had been his last hope.. sure, he could have gone to his father for help, but would his father have been able to create an antidote? (Duh, he _is_ Professor Membrane! The _WORLD_ needs his help! But how are you going to get out of here without the use of your legs?)  
  
"Zim! Come on, Zim! Get up!"   
  
The Irken just lay there, looking as if the life was draining out of him. Dib had to do something, his own life (and Zim's too) depended on it. Saving your worst enemy in order to save yourself is.. ug, if I could describe it in one word.   
  
"GIR, what are you doing?! Save him or something!"  
  
"Why? He's just sleeping.. he's having happy dreams."  
  
"No he's not! He's choking to death!"  
  
"Who is?"  
  
"Zim!"   
  
"What?"  
  
Dib sighed loudly out of irritating frustration and glared at GIR. "Damn, you're stupid."  
  
"But...But I'm _advanced_!" GIR protested, looking sort of sad.   
  
"Anyway.. could you hand me that remote control?" Dib asked, trying to be patient with GIR.  
  
"The one for the **TV**?!" GIR asked Dib excitedly.  
  
"No.. the one for the hover disk-thing."   
  
"Say you're sorry first."  
  
"Sorry?" Dib blinked at the robot. "Sorry for what?"   
  
"For calling me stoopid, _smelly_ human boy!" GIR giggled and shook his fist at Dib, doing a sort of hyperactive impression of his master.   
  
"Um.. sorry?"  
  
"Okay! Here you go!" GIR grabbed the remote control and pressed the button that was used to propel the hover disk forward and it slammed into the side of the table, tipping it dangerously. He then threw the remote at poor Dib's large, headachey head, causing the boy to go crashing down onto the horrible metal floor.  
  
"Gah!" Dib said (it was more of a surprised yelp, really), managing to break his fall with his hands. "GIR! What do you think you're doing?!"   
  
"Helping you off of the table, like you wanted."   
  
"But I didn't want-" Wait.. he _did_ want to get off of the table. He didn't want to fall, but he did want to see if he could revive Zim somehow. Looking over at the Irken for a moment, he crawled over to him.. he wasn't that far away, after all.   
  
GIR giggled insanely again, smiling at Dib.   
  
"Crawl, worm-boy!" He shouted, pointing at the human. Dib raised an eyebrow at him, giving him a 'You hang around Zim too much' sort of look, then stared down at Zim, who was definitely dead looking by now.   
  
"Come on, Zim.. cough it up or something," he said, shaking him. The Irken didn't move, really.. but Dib thought he saw one of Zim's antennae twitch. With his rapidly blurring and darkening vision it was becoming hard to tell. "Zim? Can you hear me?" Everything was darkness and sound once more.  
  
"Zim!" He elbowed the alien harshly, aiming for his stomach region in an attempt to dislodge the paper wrapper from his horrible green throat, but missing and hitting him... somewhere else. Instantly he heard a sort of squeak of pain and a mighty Irken fist connected with his face, he couldn't see to dodge it or even try to get out of the way.  
  
Zim was coughing and ranting now, fuming at the boy. Eventually the muffin wrapper dislodged itself from his throat and went flying across the room and landing neatly in a garbage can.   
  
"Yay! Two Points!" GIR cheered.  
  
"**HUMAN!!!**" He managed to snarl between couging fits.   
  
_Ahhh.. the Earth was doomed once more._   
  
Dib moved his hands from gingerly rubbing the side of his face to covering his ears. "Are you trying to _kill_ me or something?!" Zim ranted on and on. "To think I, _Zim_, almost brought down by a filthy dirt-child hurling muffin remnants and your horrible abuse of organs that should never be abused!!! You disgusting, putrid stink be-" Dib clapped a hand over Zim's large mouth, his blind eyes narrowed behind his glasses.  
  
"I also saved your life, you know. You were turning blue!"  
  
"Fwa!" Zim said as he slapped Dib's filthy, human-dirt hand away. "I needed no help from _you_!!! In mere seconds the life support devices in my PAK would have activated, and I would have been fine!"  
  
"_Please_," Dib said irritably, crossing his arms in front of him and making a sort of grumbling noise.   
  
"Cease your inane growling, stink-boy," Zim growled. "I wouldn't have almost coughed up my organs if '_someone', _that means you by the way, hadn't have interrupted my moment of glory by rudely throwing garbage!"  
  
"I warned you not to eat the wrappers," GIR smiled at his master, earning a glare from the Invader.   
  
"I wouldn't have had to throw garbage if you hadn't been taunting me with your '_superior being_' crap."  
  
"Crap? It is not _crap_! It is the truth! Do not question Zim! I am more incredibly superior than any _human_ could ever hope to be!"  
  
"Whatever," Dib said coldly and turned away from the alien. No matter what, Zim would never admit that Dib had just saved his life.. sure, he had almost killed him, but that _had_ actually been an accident. Any other day it would have been intentional. Zim stared at the human, his red eyes seeming to burn holes into his enemy's back.   
  
"Can _you_ write with both hands, Dib-human?" Zim asked, in another silly attempt to try to prove his superiority. Dib completely ignored him.  
  
"Fine," he muttered and went back to the table in silence. He enjoyed his fights with Dib, believe it or not, but now Dib just wasn't much fun at all. GIR picked up the uneaten candybar from the floor and munched it happily.

* * *

A few hours passed in silence.. Dib eventually got back onto the table (without Zim or GIR's help, GIR offered, but.. heh heh.. no) and sat on the edge, staring off into space. GIR had brought him more food, but this time it was from a convenience store down the street, so he was actually able to keep it in his stomach...barely. He was feeling a little dizzy, but it wasn't too bad yet, but he was also starting to feel tired again. He shook his head slowly, finding it horrible that he had to place his trust in someone who hated his wretched human guts, all because of one stupid mistake.   
  
Zim was now staring at the bottles before him. Dib had been listening to his tinkering with things over at the table for a long time. The alien looked almost nervous, but he struggled to regain his composure. In fact, when GIR came too close he banished him to the next room to watch more television, to which GIR happily obliged. It was around sunset, now, Dib could tell as he counted the beeping of his watch as it announced the hours as they went by.  
  
Zim was being careful.. oh so careful with those bottles.. as if they contained explosives. What Zim had to be the most careful with was a substance which the Irkens called 'Varda'. Purple had sent him such warnings with those instructions. It was dangerous in large amounts, but the single reason that the mixture of blood would work. It was in a small, dark bottle and emitted a faint purple glow from a single spot in the middle. The spot was like a nucleus, because Varda was actually a living substance. It was now mostly used in very small amounts in the life support systems of Irken PAKs, rather than much else.   
  
There was a rumor or a legend that Varda was actually a cell from a monster of the same name that had defeated the Irkens in a war for their own planet, then mysteriously died, leaving nothing but a large puddle of black goo containing its genetic information behind. No Irken alive knew if this was the truth or just a story that old ones that had survived many wars told the smeets, but it made a good story at least. Those in power denied it, because _nothing_ could defeat the mighty Irken army, _nothing_ I tell you! In fact, Zim denied it himself, even though he did believe it to be true, deep down. He had been an impressionable smeet once, too.  
  
Anyway, the strangest thing about the Varda was the way it reacted with blood of any kind. It forced an adaptation. In the case of poison, it would make whoever it was administered to to become immune. It never did this with blood that has been stagnant.. blood which hasn't pumped through veins in a long time, like Zim's plasma in the glowing room. To Varda, it was like dead blood.. and a waste of its sweet time. If the blood was more than 2 days from a beating heart, you could forget it, but the Irken blood that now pulsed through Dib's body was no longer stagnant, which is why it had to be blood from this infected creature. It could have been blood from any infected human, really.. but Dib was the only one handy.. well, the only one, period.   
  
Zim caught himself staring in awe at the glow which seemed to grow brighter and brighter, until he forced himself to look away. It was too.. horridly beautiful. He knew that the Dib would have probably killed to see it, what with his love (and in Zim's case, hate) of the paranormal, and a small part of him wished that the boy could. Maybe someday he would show him... things..   
  
He sunk an empty syringe into the end of the bottle and drew out only a very small amount. The nucleus pulsed and moved as far from the needle as it could, as if it were trying to preserve its life. As he pulled it out, it seemed to relax and anything that was taken from the bottle was immediately regenerated. He set it down carefully, chancing a glance over at the Dib. Dib wasn't paying attention to him, not really, anyway. He was lost in his thoughts, mostly thinking about how frustrating it was to be blind, but also thinking about how much he didn't want to be here for what may be his very last days on Earth. Sure, Zim had a plan, but in his mind, Zim's plans seemed to have a very low success rate. I beg to differ, but these are Dib's thoughts, not mine.   
  
"This sucks.."  
  
Zim heard him sigh, and thought about saying something to him but decided against it. Why should he have to attempt to comfort the human anyway? He was Zim, and Zim strikes fear into the hearts of all.. he does not give comfort to anyone. He also thought about how the stupid Dib-human could cause him to lose his concentration if he started another argument again.. stupid Dib.. he held in a snarl and resisted the urge to throw a spare bottle at the boy's head. A few moments before he had seemed ready to forgive the Dib for nearly killing him and causing him so much grief, but now he was back to hating everything about him.  
  
'Must...focus!' He thought as he looked down at the table again. "Okay," he said aloud. Picking up the syringes of his own blood, he emptied them into a long, narrow, cylindrical shaped container. Dib's face turned towards him, but if the boy could see, Zim couldn't tell and didn't care. He was focusing on the task at hand. Dib could see variations of light, and some slight colors, and he squinted at the faint purple glow in the room. It was frustrating, being able to see one minute, and then.. not.  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
"Shhh.." Zim hissed. He was adding droplets of the amazing black goo to his blood in the container, and as soon as he was done he sealed it quickly, as if the substance was threatening to escape. He held it at eye-level, staring at it intently. His blood fizzed and mixed with the Varda, turning his blood from greenish-blue to black, which was a good thing. The reaction meant that the Varda was working it's horrible magic, making itself immune to the toxins carried in Irken blood.   
  
"Adaptation," Zim said with a sigh as he put the container down. This process would take hours. He would have to watch it closely, as soon as the fizzing stopped and his blood turned back to it's normal color he would have to add Dib's blood. The Varda would successfully combine the two, so that instead of the human blood being poisoned by the Irken, they would simply mix and all of the toxins would be neutralized as the human adapted. The final stage would involve injecting this into the Dib, where it would spread and.. detoxify his veins. Ultimately, Dib would just become immune to the poison, and nothing like this would ever happen again. Too bad there wasn't an antidote for rain.  
  
Unfortunately, Zim would never be able to use this weakness of Dib's in the future, but he could always find some other way to kill the one person that was almost like his frie- enemy! The one person that was his enemy! Well.. all of the filthy humans were his enemies, really. His head hurt.   
  
"What about it?" Dib asked, interrupting Zim's train of thought.   
  
"Huh?" Zim stared at him, blinking stupidly.   
  
"You just said something about adaptation."  
  
"Oh.. I was just thinking out loud, Dib-monkey, that's all," he said, sounding sort of weary, almost tired. It had been a long, horrible day. He looked over at Dib, then back at the container. 

"Tell me."  
  
"Tell you what? What _madness_ do you want to know about now? Wasn't my Great Uncle Milford explanation good enough for you?"  
  
"I want to know what you're doing," Dib squinted his eyes as if that would help him see better. Zim growled, one of his eyes twitching. The Dib-human was too persistant sometimes.. it was frustrating.  
  
"You still don't trust me, do you?" He laced his fingers together behind his back, glaring at the boy.  
  
"Nope."


	11. Dib's dream, and a new dilemma

Okay.. I am sorry for my much longer than normal absence, and would like to add that for me this chapter was a complete disappointment. I have the ending all plotted out, you see.. but to reach that ending.. I have the most horrible writer's block. I hope that you all will forgive me for this crappy chapter, I swear that I'm going to make the next one better.

Other than that, I also didn't know that Varda was something from Lord of the Rings.. curses! I'm not going to go back and change it, dammit.. but thank you for letting me know and junk.. damn damn damn.. now I feel cheesy. When I searched for the name on Google all I could find it in was names of scientists.. lol. Also, I would like to let you know that I passed my college placement test! Yay! Thank you to those of you that wished me luck, and also to those who didn't, because you're reading my story! I could just hug you! mmm! I'll also be moving soon, but hopefully I can get this story finished in a timely manner for you all.

**Chapter 11 - Dib's dream, and a new dilemma**

* * *

Zim finally gave in, just so that the Dib wouldn't continue bothering him for the rest of the weekend, even though he knew that that was inevitable. Dib bothered him always, even if he was just sitting there blinking and breathing. Over the next few minutes, Zim told him all about his ingenious plans for saving Dib's _pathetic_ life, and exactly how the antidote would work. When he was finished, he looked at Dib as if he was expecting him to 'ooh' and 'ahh' at the sheer amazingness of his plan.  
  
"Well?" He asked expectantly, eyeing the Dib-human with a stern glare.   
  
"That's really going to work?" Dib raised an eyebrow at his nemesis, feeling very doubtful about it.  
  
"Of _course_ it's going to work! Are you questioning my intelligence or something? If it works for the evil, extinct lizard-monsters of Conventia, it will surely work for smelly, disgusting _humans_!" The alien ranted loudly.  
  
"I question your intelligence every day," Dib retorted with a smirk. Zim chose to ignore his enemy's incredibly idiotic remarks and went to go stare at the container again. Dib's eyes followed the alien across the room, he could see again, for the moment.  
  
The mixture was still fizzing and bubbling like crazy, but that was to be expected. Zim looked up at the monitor that was keeping track of the human's status, trying to make sure Dib's body was still functioning at a fairly normal rate.. it was, save for the gradual increase in toxins and the very slow rising of his temperature.   
  
"Human," he said, trying to hide the concern in his voice and doing quite well. "Tell me.. How are you... feeling?" His insides gave a sort of shudder at the word. Dib gave him a look of disbelief as if to say 'How do you think I'm feeling, dumbass?!'   
  
"Nauseous," the boy stated simply, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He was starting to feel the cold again, and the look of loathing that he normally gave Zim had returned to his face. He took pleasure in the fact that Zim's green skin had paled slightly again. Causing Zim discomfort was.. nice.   
  
"And.. as for your temperature?" Zim started after a moment of further staring at the boy.  
  
"Cold," Dib admitted after a shiver ran through him. He hated fevers.  
  
"No," Zim said, "You are actually warmer than normal. That could be dangerous. What do you require?"   
  
"A blanket," the Dib said, staring at Zim. The cold was driving him crazy.. was Zim's base always this cold? He had goosebumps all over his skin, even his trenchcoat wouldn't keep him warm.   
  
"A blanket? _Foolish_ Dib! I cannot give you a blanket if you have a _horrible_ fever! How on this putrid planet could becoming more warm lower your body temperature?! I must cover you in ice! _Ice_, I tell you!"   
  
"Are you crazy?! Ice would probably drive me insane!" Dib had pulled his legs in closer, just the thought of ice made him want to run around screaming for some reason.. he was trembling... he really, _really_ wanted a blanket. Zim was grinning at him now, it was creepy.  
  
"Insane?" He repeated, then looked away from the human, apparently staring off into space. Dib blinked at Zim, wondering why the hell the little alien was such a damn psychopath. Zim suddenly looked back at Dib, a manic gleam in his large red eyes, but then even that disappeared quickly. He looked indecisive about something, as if he was trying to decide if he should really cover the Dib in ice or not. He could see the boy shivering.  
  
"Er.. uh.. Enough of your nonsense, piddly little Earth-monkey!" Zim waived his hand at Dib, as if he had been talking the entire time. Dib raised an eyebrow at the now fairly normal looking Zim. Zim glared at him in disgust, muttered something about filth absolutely covering his labs, and then marched out of the room. Dib shook his head and stared at the ceiling. Of all the interesting things he could see in Zim's lab, he just had to be confined here to stare at this one room. It was becoming exceedingly boring.   
  
"I wonder where my camera is.." he said aloud.   
  
"Being dissected by alien hotdogs.." Zim growled as he threw a blanket over the large head of the distracted Dib. Dib pulled it off of his head with a sort of huff of annoyance, and his hair was now sticking up more than ever. Zim took one look at him and couldn't keep a straight face. He snickered aloud, gesturing at the human's strange, pointy hair.  
  
"Yeah, yeah.. whatever," Dib said irritably, then layed down, turning away from Zim and pulling the blanket over his shivering, exhausted body.

* * *

Zim had gone back to keeping a close watch on the container, but when the fizzing and bubbling showed no signs of slowing, he looked back over at the human that was pretty much his captive. Zim watched him for a while, marvelling at the stupid primitiveness that was human sleep. Irkens needed no sleep, only the occasional rest after dealing with something particularly exhausting or horribly and strenuously annoying.. a weekend shared with the Dib would definitely cause him to require some rest, and he was looking forward to it.   
  
The Dib was snarling in his sleep again, causing Zim to shake his head.. it sounded like a very quiet chainsaw or something. How could this creature be his horrifying match? On many levels they were equals, except for maybe an evolutionary level.. and Zim couldn't trust the Dib.. he didn't need his friendship either, despite the fact that every now and then the Dib said something that was actually interesting and caused Zim to actually enjoy his presence.   
  
A few hours passed in silence. He could hear GIR giggling in the next room at some commercial or something, and was grateful that the robot was just watching tv instead of destroying something or making a mess. The Dib-human had stopped his snoring and was now mumbling something about his sister turning into an evil witch and was making her flying vampire pigs attack him. Zim stared at him, one of his eyes twitching.  
  
"What nonsense are you speaking of now, Dib?" He demanded, walking over to the tableside. "You are... very strange."  
  
"Help..." Dib mumbled, rolling over onto his back. His brow furrowed and his face was covered in sweat. Zim's antennae flicked forward and he pulled the blanket off of the human.  
  
"Help you with what?" The alien asked him, gingerly poking the boy's stomach. "What's wrong with you, filth-boy? Are you hallucinating?"  
  
"Zim," Dib murmured, his eyes squeezing closed tightly as he flinched in his sleep. "help... evil pigs.." He said. Zim sighed loudly in annoyance, crossing his arms.   
  
"Please, go on," he growled. "This is the least fascinating conversation I've ever had." Dib woke up suddenly with a gasp, to see Zim standing over him with his huge red eyes.   
  
"AHHH!!!" Dib held his arms up as if to fend Zim off. "Where am I? Why are you here? What's going on?" Zim rolled his eyes, though Dib couldn't tell because the alien wasn't wearing his contacts.   
  
"Go back to sleep you horrible worm baby.. I don't know what's more annoying.. your stupid sleep babble or the craziness you speak of when you're awake," he said with a snort. Dib looked up at him in confusion.   
  
"I'm... in your base?"  
  
"Well yeah, where else would you be? You've been here for hours."   
  
Dib looked around the room, feeling even more confused. The last thing he could remember was shutting his computer off before going to bed on Friday night..   
  
"What day is it?" He asked Zim, feeling a sort of terror bubbling up in his stomach. Something important was nagging at the back of his mind, but he couldn't place it.   
  
"It is still Saturday, stupid Dib-human. Don't worry, we still have more than 24 hours before your horrifying and untimely death."  
  
"Death?" Dib repeated, sounding panic-stricken. What was going on?  
  
"Yes!" Zim snarled, his antennae flattening against the back of his head in sheer irritation. "Hello, Dib.. what have we been trying to prevent for the last.. gah.. more than 12 hours?! Ug.. your stupid human-ness is making my head hurt!"   
  
"You're trying to _prevent_ my death, rather than be the cause of it?" It sounded so strange to Dib.   
  
"Fool! I _will_ be the cause of your death, but not at this present moment," Zim ranted. "What is wrong with you? Have you completely forgotten everything?!"  
  
"You know.. I think I have," Dib said, staring blankly at his sworn enemy. Zim stared back at him in disbelief.  
  
"Ohhh.. for crying out loud, and for the sake of my sanity, just go back to sleep!"  



	12. Virus

Okay... this chapter was somewhat easier to write for some reason, and I'm working on the next one.. some weirdness happens in here.. I think I was watching too much Inu-Yasha on Adult Swim, so please forgive my silly parodies of certain commercials.. gah. Anyways, I also got my hands on a copy of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, which is absolutely great, in a disturbing sort of way. Jhonen Vasquez is the man, but you all knew that already. However, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac had no influence on this chapter. I was done writing it yesterday.. heehee... I'm under the influence of Beethoven right now, and if my brother does not stop dancing around me like a total moron I'm going to get homicidal on him. On with the fic! Deadlines disturb me! Let me fight off rat-monkeys with sporks!

**Chapter 12 - Virus**

* * *

And so.. the Earth boy had amnesia. It was a great annoyance to Zim, because once again the Universe's largest pest was demanding answers from him. Zim couldn't contain his groans of irritation at this latest unfortunate mishap, but he refused to explain himself to the Dib once again.   
  
"Ohh.. for Irk's sake," Zim muttered to himself.   
  
"What?"  
  
"I said you're really annoying when you're awake!" Zim huffed, crossing his arms and turning away. "Why don't humans sleep more?"  
  
"How many hours was I asleep?"  
  
"About four.."   
  
"No wonder I'm so tired..." Dib said weakly, covering his mouth as he yawned.   
  
"So you'll be going back to sleep then, irritating human?" Zim asked eagerly, almost desperately hoping the answer was yes. He liked the feeling of peace he had when Dib was asleep.   
  
"Actually.. no," Dib smirked, hearing the almost happy tone in Zim's voice. The alien's antennae drooped in disappointment as a glare returned to his eyes. "Why did you say that we had 24 hours until my untimely death.. and why is it so untimely for you?" He asked this cautiously.. why couldn't he remember? This was the horrible feeling that had been in his stomach before Zim had even told him.. some part of him knew vaguely of his impending doom.   
  
"Come on, Dib.. can't you just remember so I don't have to tell you all over again? I swear.. repeating myself is going to be bad for my health or something.. I can't wait until this weekend is over!"  
  
"I wish I could remember," Dib muttered, "Then I could just not talk to you at all." He narrowed his eyes at the alien. "What did you do to me?" Zim looked insulted that Dib would even accuse him of anything, until he remembered that he would indeed love to cause Dib immense amounts of pain... and torture... but still, he had his good name to protect. After all, if he had been the one to do something to Dib, it would have been so much worse. So much more painful... how could Dib even think that he would be so kind to kill him with poison? No.. he would have used poison, and sharp pointy things.. and he would probably also dissect the human while he was still alive or something.. yess..   
  
"You did it to yourself!" Zim shouted, clenching his fists so hard that his claws actually started cutting through his thick gloves. "You should be grateful that I'm even caring enough to bother to save you, even if it _is_ just to kill you later."   
  
"So you.. didn't do anything to me?"  
  
"Of course I didn't. I wouldn't lie when it comes to destroying you, Dib-human."   
  
"What happened?"  
  
"You very stupidly touched something you shouldn't have, and are dying because of it. As we speak, poison is pumping through your fragile and inferior human veins, you're becoming weaker, and soon you'll probably keel over and start twitching and foaming at the mouth before your heart stops completely," Zim said darkly, grinning as he watched Dib's reaction to his words. "You'll be in so much pain.. but I'm not sure when the really horrible things will start happening... in the reptiles it occured within seconds. I'm sure that you, as a monkey, aren't very far from a reptile on the evolutionary chain at all. I also think that it will be very unbearable when your muscles start spasming... you'll tell me, won't you?"   
  
Dib looked panic stricken once again as he sat up to look at Zim, who was now chuckling evilly to himself and staring intently at the boy.   
  
"Poison?" The Earth boy asked. He felt lightheaded again, like his brain was going fuzzy.. then everything went black.  
  
"Dib?" Zim asked, peering closer at him. The boy had fainted. He lay there, his eyes closed, covered in sweat once more. "Did I scare you to death? Has your heart stopped?" He listened closely with his internal ears, hearing nothing but his own breathing at first.. then as he focused he heard the beating of Dib's very alive heart. "Damn," he murmured with a slight smile and a soft sigh of relief.

* * *

The human eventually stirred with a soft groan. He had hit his head pretty hard on the edge of the table, which had been the only place that hadn't been covered with a soft padding. Zim didn't look up from what he was doing now. The mixture had stopped it's fizzing and had now turned back to the color of Zim's blood.. only slightly darker, and it was time for him now to add the Dib's blood to it.   
  
It had a pretty color, the Dib's blood. It was interesting to look at. The alien had to contain his evil giggles as he thought about how nice it would look splattered all over the walls of his labs. "Gah!" He said suddenly, shaking the morbid thoughts out of his head and quickly opening the container to add the human's deep crimson blood. Panting slightly, he closed it and set it back down on the table. 'I must be going mad,' he thought to himself, 'yes, this weekend is driving me mad...' He heard a metallic clattering from down the hallway.  
  
"FREE THE SOCK CHICKEN!!!" GIR screamed, running into the room. Zim gasped and pressed a button on a control panel that was set in the wall, causing a forcefield to envelop itself around the container where the Varda was once again bubbling and fizzing as if it was corrosive. The robot made an odd shrieking noise and jumped onto his master's head.  
  
"What?" Dib asked weakly, turning to his side to look at the odd pair. They slowly came into focus, and his head hurt.  
  
"_GIR_! Get off of my head!"  
  
"We have to free Sock Chicken!" GIR announced again, then started giggling. Dib raised an eyebrow at Zim, who just shrugged.  
  
"Who's Sock Chicken?" Dib asked, straightening his glasses as they had been askew on his face.  
  
"Get _off_ of my head, GIR!" Zim ordered again.   
  
"Some guy on tv!" GIR said cheerfully, jumping off of the distressed alien's head. "He's being held prisoner!" Zim let out a huff of annoyance again, glaring down at his crazy robot slave. "We have to set him free!"  
  
"Fine!" Zim's eye was twitching. "GIR!"  
  
"Yes sir?!" The robot's eyes and body were glowing red again as he saluted.  
  
"Go.. free your sock chicken guy or whatever..." Zim waved a hand dismissively at GIR, who in turn giggled loudly and raced from the room.  
  
"FREE SOCK CHICKEN!!!" He shouted once again. Zim sighed in relief as he heard GIR's feet clattering down the hall... until he heard a loud crash followed by the buzzing of electricity.  
  
"GIR!" He shouted again, only to hear more maniac laughter from a floor above him. More crashes.. clattering footsteps. The giggles were coming from below them now. Dib raised an eyebrow at Zim again. "Computer!" Zim yelled, his antennae flattening against his skull.  
  
"Yes sir?" The computer replied, it's voice sounded slower for some reason.   
  
"What madness is GIR speaking of, and what is he doing?"  
  
"Sir, the unit GIR is moving from computer console console....in the house in his attempt..."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"To free the one called Sock... Chickennnnn..." The computer trailed off, making a loud buzzing noise.  
  
"Computer?" Zim asked, but the computer did not respond to him.   
  
"**Overload.. humanoid program invasion.. virus alert!**" The computer shouted, then buzzed again and shut down throughout the house. The lights went out, leaving Dib and Zim in blackness once more.   
  
"Some advanced alien technology," Dib laughed, looking around in the pitch blackness. "You can still be infected by human viruses?" Zim growled in response and marched from the room. Dib hoped that he wouldn't forget that.. it may come in handy one day.   
  
"GIR!!!" The Invader roared as he stood in the hall. This was stupid.. how was he supposed to watch the mixture and fix the computer system at the same time? GIR dropped from the ceiling, saluting him once again. His red eyes cast an eerie light on the walls of the hallway. Dib felt a chill run through him as the light seeped into the room.  
  
"Yes, my lord?!"  
  
"What did you _do_?!"  
  
"I went on the internet to free the sock chicken, like you told me to, master!" GIR smiled up at him, his eyes turning back to the turquoise-ish color they usually were. Zim growled, seething with anger. His fists were clenched again and his body shook.  
  
"The.. internet?" Zim said slowly, forcing himself to remain calm. Dib listened carefully in the next room. "Let me guess.. the human internet?" GIR nodded in response. Zim slapped himself in the forehead, growling in annoyance as his anger slowly but surely started to fade. "GIR, do you realize that the house's computer now has a virus because of that inferior human technology?"  
  
"Yay!" GIR giggled and danced. Dib smirked from where he lay on the table. When he really thought about it, Zim wasn't too much of a threat to Earth if he had GIR with him.   
  
"No.. no GIR," Zim said. "That's bad." He sounded very.. tired suddenly, and felt even moreso.   
  
"Oh," GIR responded, not really caring very much. The Invader sighed loudly, picking his sidekick up and taking him into the room next to Dib's.   
  
"What am I going to do with you?" He asked absentmindedly, thinking about how he was going to manage to fix everything...fast.  
  
"Feed me tacos?" GIR asked him hopefully.   
  
"Heh heh heh.. I think not, GIR." Zim shook his head as he put him down. "I want you to stay right here, and do not move an inch from this spot until I get the computer working again. I am also ordering you to not make a sound because I'm going to need every once of concentration that my amazing brain can provide, and I don't need you disturbing the Dib-human, either." Not to mention the fact that when the computers shut off, the forcefield around the antidote had also deactivated, leaving it exposed to the amazing destruction that GIR could cause to it.  
  
"Wait.." GIR said slowly, "Why can't I disturb the Dib-human?"' He then gasped as if suddenly coming to a realization of.. something.   
  
"Because he's going to need his rest for the recovery pro-"  
  
"I know why!" GIR announced loudly. Zim raised an invisible eyebrow at the robot.  
  
"Why, GIR?"  
  
"Could it be that master actually cares enough about the Dib-filth to want him to get his rest?" Zim cringed at the very thought, grabbed GIR and chucked him across the room, where the robot landed in a crumpled heap in front of the blank and silent tv monitor.   
  
"Whoo!" He cheered. "I knew it!"  
  
"_NONSENSE_!" Zim ranted once more. "You speak madness! I care for nothing, GIR! NOTHING!" He had said it himself, earlier.. and he remembered it well. It was all his good side's fault.. curse it! Damn it! Hopefully the Dib would never remember what he had said, it was humiliating.. and stupid. How could he let his emotions get in the way? How could he have been so.. weak? "I do not need his companionship!" He ranted aloud, then muttered some very foul Irken curse words at himself for saying so.   
  
It was horrible to feel so torn. His fondness of the human and his immense hatred of him were eating away at his insides.  
  
GIR was smiling at him, smiling as if he knew exactly what his master was thinking.. feeling.. but that was impossible. Zim eyed him suspiciously. Irken technology was in fact that advanced, but there was no way GIR could possibly..  
  
"Do you need a hug?" The robot asked, reaching toward him. Zim cringed again and stepped back, he thought he heard the Dib snickering in the next room.  
  
"No, no GIR.. I do _not_ need a hug," he said calmly. "What I need you to do is to stay here, and _please_ follow my orders as I fix what you have broken." 

"Awww... you said please." GIR smiled again.

"......." glare...

"Yes sir!" GIR's eyes were glowing red again, a confirmation that Zim's orders were at least understood. The alien sighed again, marching from the room once more and making his way down the dark hall.   
  
"Zim?"   
  
He turned as the cautious sounding voice floated from the room where Dib was contained.   
  
"What is it, Dib-human? Your sister's wretched piggies aren't plagueing you again are they?" He entered the pitch blackness of the room, his hands on his hips. Dib was staring in the direction of the door. He couldn't see Zim, and the alien knew this.. but he felt him and could hear him there.   
  
"No, I was just wondering.." the boy trailed off, thinking about whether he should really ask his question or not.   
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"Could you use any help?"   
  
"What?" Zim was once again staring at the Earth-child in disbelief. The human actually _wanted_ to help him? This was unexpected. His antennae were twitching slightly.   
  
"I'm serious," Dib said cautiously again, leaning forward and trying to get down from the table. "Would you like me to help you?" Zim nodded slowly, then shook his head quickly, putting back on the mask that he usually showed to the human. Thank goodness humans didn't have ocular implants.  
  
"Well.. I'm quite sure that you won't be able to do anything, seeing as you know _nothing_ of superior Irken technology........ and I intend to keep it that way," he quickly added. "But you may be able to help with this.. stupid.. virus the computer speaks of-"  
  
Dib gasped as his legs gave out under him again as soon as he put his weight onto them. He reached forward to stop his fall, but he didn't need to. Zim's arm was around his waist as the alien caught him and supported him again. Dib shuddered and let out a sound like a growl.   
  
"It's a shame that you can't remember anything, Dib.. else you would have known that your legs haven't worked properly since the accident," Zim was calm, and though he hated to admit it, too tired to put up much of an fight against Dib. He didn't shudder at the fact that he had to be in close contact with Dib again, it was pointless to keep doing so. At least he wasn't covered in slime or something. "You really should be getting more rest."  
  
"Wow, Zim.. I didn't know you cared so much," Dib teased, though his tone sounded malicious, as he smirked in the darkness. Zim's eye twitched slightly as he stomped down hard on the human's foot. "**OW!!!**"  
  
"Shut up," the Irken hissed as he half carried, half dragged the boy from the room.


	13. The Unluckiest Chapter Ever

**Chapter 13 - The Unluckiest Chapter Ever  
**

* * *

"Don't you have a flashlight or something?"  
  
"A.. flashlight?"  
  
"Yeah, or emergency lighting.. why doesn't your base have emergency lighting?"  
  
"Oh, it does have emergency lighting, just not where it isn't necessary," Zim pressed a button on his PAK, activating a mechanical arm from within. The end of the arm glowed with a whitish blue light, allowing Dib to see where they were going. "The only places that have emergency lighting are the potentially dangerous places, such as the catwalks and stairs or the area near the kitchen garbage disposal, which in fact isn't really a garbage disposal at all. I have no use for emergency lighting anywhere else."  
  
Dib turned his head to look behind them as Zim helped him down the hallway towards the stairs he had used only hours before. He could see a pair of round eyes glowing in the darkness, staring after them and then fading to red as they moved off in the opposite direction.   
  
"Zim?"   
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I think your robot's on the move," the boy answered. His voice was soft, almost a whisper. Zim turned slowly, peering down the dark hallway beyond the places the light touched.   
  
"He better not have moved from that spot if he knows what's good for him!" Zim said threateningly, loud enough for the robot's hearing sensors to pick up. There was nothing there.. no lights.. no sounds except for the pair's breathing. Zim saw nothing in the gloom and just shrugged it off.. Dib started thinking that he may have just been imagining things... and perhaps he was. "Worry not, human," Zim said as he continued half-dragging the boy down the hall.   
  
They reached the emergency staircase, which turned out to be a very painful encounter for Dib. About halfway down to the floor which contained the house's AI brain and also the main computer system, Zim slipped on something that was covering a few of the stairs. As he tried to regain his balance, he accidentally dropped the Dib, who went rolling and screaming away down towards the floors below. The slippery stuff turned out to be the remains of a knocked over, unfinished Brainfreezy that GIR had left behind. Zim growled, making a mental note to clean that up and to remind GIR that drinks were no longer allowed on the stairs as he cautiously made his way downwards to retrieve the Dib.   
  
Dib groaned softly. His head was hurting again. He could hear the faint sound of Zim's footsteps somewhere above him as the alien descended towards where he lay.   
  
"Dib-human?" Zim called for him. The Irken was answered by a faint moan far below. The human had fallen farther than he had expected. "Hang on.. I'll be there in a moment!" He called again. He cautiously stepped around something else that was glistening faintly on the stairs. The emergency lighting reflected off of it.. perhaps it was just more of the Brainfreezy? Zim turned up the light from his PAK so that it now illuminated the stairway like daylight. Not bothering to investigate any further, he bounded down the stairs as quickly as he could to the human below, nearly slipping about 6 times in the process.   
  
When he arrived Dib wasn't groaning anymore, but just staring blankly at the ceiling with those amber eyes of his. He blinked slowly, and he was surrounded in a pool of the same substance that was covering the stairs. Zim gasped loudly and shuddered when he realized that it was the human's blood. Gingerly, he lifted the human once more as he activated his spider-legs. Dib was bleeding from the back of his head.. his clothes were becoming covered in it. The boy groaned faintly again, and Zim's hands were beginning to sting.. to sting as if he was exposed to water. He gritted his teeth and set the human down in a sitting position away from the pool of his glistening red blood.  
  
"Zim?" Dib said weakly. It felt like he had been hit by a truck.. maybe his bones were broken..  
  
"Yes, Dib-human?" The alien asked him, reaching into his PAK for something to patch the human up with.   
  
"I think I'm dying.. this hurts."  
  
Zim snickered in the light as he pulled out a roll of what looked like ordinary gauze bandages. He pulled Dib's head forward and placed a pad of cloth over the wound and started securing it. He winced as Dib's blood touched him again.   
  
"You were dying before.. and.." Something nagged at the back of his mind, trying to break down the barriers of his pride as he tried to wipe the blood away. "I'm sorry for dropping you down the stairs, even if it _was_ an accident."  
  
Dib smiled faintly, but Zim could see the look of pain in his eyes. This boy had been through too much in the last few hours. It was a miracle that he was still alive at all, especially after that fall. He should have been dead, Dib knew it, Zim knew it. The pain almost made him want to be put out of his misery, but he had to live. Who would fight Zim if he didn't live? He had to remain.   
  
"That was unexpected," Dib said. He looked serious now as he stared up at the alien.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You're actually sorry for causing me excruciating amounts of pain?" Dib smirked. Zim felt himself cringe.  
  
"Ohhh.. don't make me take it back!" He threatened with a growl. Dib just laughed softly. The alien sighed and picked the boy up once more. His spider-legs clicked on the floor as he carried him through the room with the AI brain, and he was ignoring the Dib's sounds of moany-groany pain. There was nothing he could do for him at the moment anyway. He paused in front of a huge monitor on the wall in a somewhat smaller seprate room that branched off from the one with the house's brain, setting the Dib down on a sort of cushioned Irken chair.  
  
"How many computer screens do you have in your house?" Dib blinked.  
  
"I would say about 50," Zim answered absentmindedly, he was fiddling around with something in the slim space behind the monitor and not really paying attention. Within moments the monitor flickered on to a blank purple screen.   
  
"Computer override," The computer said faintly, "switching to manual control only until user Zim activates base automation."   
  
Zim pressed a few buttons on the control panel until the main operating system loaded before him. Dib gasped softly, the memory of Purple's message resurfacing in his mind. He also managed to remember that Zim had told him it was his Uncle.. which the human believed to be a load of bullshit, for lack of a meaner word to call it.   
  
"Dib-monkey, tell me.. what does a human computer virus look like?"   
  
"Eh.. well.. it's usually a sort of file.. there's so many different kinds, Zim. They all do different things. They could erase everything or make your computer crash all the time.. I dunno what exactly your computer has." The boy shrugged. Zim shook his head.   
  
"No matter.. I think that it should be fairly easy to locate and destroy." His eyes scanned the computer screen as he moved through the file system. Eventually he found it, the only file that was named in English, rather than Irken. It was slowly duplicating itself in an effort to not be removed, but it was having trouble controlling the Irken system. Zim removed it completely, and put a block on the part of the system that had accessed the human internet per GIR's controlling.   
  
Dib leaned back against the chair, trying to focus on what Zim was doing. His eyes were growing dimmer and his breathing was becoming more ragged, the pain definitely wasn't going away.. He felt something trickling down the back of his neck and realized that he was bleeding through the cloth that Zim had placed on his headwound. He felt broken, and it was as if his conciousness was slipping away.. but something else too.  
  
The room suddenly filled with light, which continued through the base once more. Dib closed his eyes tightly, the light only made his head hurt even more than it already did. Everything hurt so much. His clothes were sticking to the back of the chair, soggy with warm, red blood. Zim was smirking triumphantly at his ingeniousness, he laughed, then turned and said something to the human. When Dib didn't respond, he looked concerned. Dib watched him, saw him coming closer, but couldn't understand what was going on.   
  
Zim flattened his antennae against his head, his eyes were growing wide as he saw the human's dimming. Without hesitation he reached forward and pulled the boy against him. Dib may have screamed from the sudden pain he felt, but he couldn't tell.. he wasn't listening to himself. All he could hear now was the blood rushing in his ears, his own heart pounding loudly. Zim was barking orders to the computer, ordering it to take them back up to the floor with the medical room. A platform appeared beneath them and started lifting the two of them up to the floors above. Dib's pain seemed to lessen as Zim moved out of focus. He felt cold again, despite the warmth of Zim's close body. His heartbeat was slowing.  
  
"Don't you _dare_, Dib!" He heard Zim shouting, but now he sounded so far away, as if he was on the other side of the stars. "Don't you die on me! You have to live and try to protect your wretched planet from my alien evil! You can't go! You hear me?! You can't die yet!" Evidently Zim could feel his slowing heart, could see his life threatening to leave the boy that was his enemy forever.   
  
"So this is what death feels like?" Dib questioned to no one in particular. Zim was leaning close to him, his voice must have been barely a whisper. Dib just stared at the alien as the world slowly went black for him. Zim screamed and shook him as all of the light faded from his eyes completely.  
  
"No no no!" He shouted, then slowly stopped shaking the boy as he managed to regain whatever was left of his composure. He was trembling. "Goodbye, Dib."

* * *

Dib woke with a gasp, in a cold sweat, coming face to face with a very annoyed looking Zim. Zim's arms were crossed in front of him, he was wearing his disguise. Dib was panting loudly, looking around at the room. His skin was chalk-white, as if he had seen a ghost. Why was he in the living room?  
  
"_FINALLY_!" Zim shouted, sounding on the verge of strangling him. GIR appeared next to him, smiling and drinking another Brain Freezy. "How many of those alarm clocks do you use in your wretched home, Dib-human?! I've been trying to wake you up for the last hour!" Dib was staring at him in a mixture of disbelief and horror.  
  
"I'm.. alive?" He asked uncertainly. He was expecting heaven or something.. not Zim's house. Maybe this was _hell_?  
  
"Of course you're alive! Not to mention we're more than an hour late for skool," Zim said, though he sounded less than enthusiastic to be going back to that miserable place.   
  
"What happened?!" Dib demanded, hopping off the couch and suddenly feeling shocked that his legs could actually hold him.   
  
"Well duh!" Zim said impatiently. "The antidote worked! You're just as alive and irritating as you ever were."  
  
"Wait a minute! What about the virus in your computers and the stairs? I.. you slipped while you were taking me down to the main computer and dropped me down the stairs and... I died from the fall. I died!" Dib looked around him, his eyes shifting from side to side. Zim looked at him in confusion, then smiled.   
  
"Dib.. you've been unconcious since you fainted yesterday, right after I told you what was going to happen," Zim said with a laugh. "You had another.. dream? Is that what humans call them? A subconcious illusion that happens during sleep? Yes. I never carried you down any stairs.. you never died, Dib."

"Then why did I feel so cold? And the blood was trickling down my back and.. and the pain.. you said goodbye to me!" Zim rolled his eyes, sick of the boy's rantings.  
  
"You felt cold because you still had a fever.. and the stuff trickling down your back was actually coffee, because GIR spilled some on you last night.. and the pain must have been from your stupid twitching!"  
  
"I was twitching?"  
  
"Your muscles were spasming most violently when the antidote was taking effect. I thought you were going to fall off the table. You were twitching like a.." Zim paused to think. "Like a filthy spider trying to tapdance." He shuddered at the thought. Dib started to smile, though.   
  
"I'm alive!" He shouted gleefully. Suddenly he felt like dancing. Zim shook his head slowly and threw Dib's backpack at the boy's large cranium.  
  
"Yeah, unfortunately for me. Your sister dropped that off earlier. She said that your father will not accept you staying here for the day, so she was forced to bring it here for you. Then she muttered something about science and you being an ass and walked off." GIR got all smiley and giggly when Gaz was mentioned. Dib managed to have ducked just in time to avoid the projectile and slipped his bag onto his back. "But now that you're awake, get out of my house!" With that said, Zim roughly shoved Dib out the front door, following closely behind him. Zim still felt exhausted, but he could handle a day at skool.. he would play sick tomorrow.   
  
Zim started down the sidewalk, then growled at Dib when the boy started walking next to him. "Honestly, haven't you had enough of being near me this weekend, Dib-stink? You're starting to piss me off... no, you've been pissing me off for the last 48 hours. Can't you just leave me alone?" Dib looked akward for a moment, looking down at his feet.  
  
"Zim?"  
  
"Hm?" The alien narrowed his eyes at the boy.  
  
"Thank you..."

The End. (in case you couldn't tell.)

* * *

**Aftermath Author's Note**: I want to thank all of you that gave me a review.. thank you all so much! I love you guys! Now, I am going to take a short break from fic writing to do some reading and some artwork, but I will be back. It may not be until after I move, though, which will hopefully be very soon. gah. Once again, though.. thank you all. Your reviews and support mean a lot to me.

Oh, as for the dream thing, some people think that if you die in a dream, you die in real life.. but how will we ever know if that's shit or not?


End file.
